LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

Theological   S 

eminary , 

PRINCETON, 

N.J. 

Case, 

DiVil 

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Shelf, 

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BooJc, 

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sec 


AIJ  INQUIRY 

« 


INTO 


THE    ACCORDANCY    OF    WAR 


WITH  THE 


PRINCIPLES  OF  CHRISTIANITY, 


AND 


iN  EXAMINATION  OF  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REASONING  BY  WHICH 
IT  IS  DEFENDED. 


WITH 


OBSERVATIONS  ON  SOME  OP  THE  CAUSES  OF  WAR  AND  ON 
SOME  OF  ITS  EFFECTS. 


V 

BY    JONATHAN   DYMOND 


('ontempt  prior  to  examination,  however  comfortable  to  the  mind  which  entertains  it, 
or  however  natural  to  great  parts,  is  extremely  dangerous;  and  more  apt  than  almost 
any  other  disposition,  to  produce  erroneous  judgments  both  of  persons  and  opinions. 

Paley. 


PHILADELPHIA : 
URIAH    HUNT    AND    SON, 

44  NORTH  FOURTH  STREET. 

JOSEPH   SNOWDON, 

84  ARCH  STREET. 


CONTENTS. 


Preface  :»-----■  5 

L—CAUSES  OF  WAR. 

Original  causes — Present  multiplicity  -  -  -  -  9 

Want  of  inquiry — This  want  not  manifested  on  parallel  subjects       -         10 
National  irritability     -  -  -  -  -  -  -13 

*^  Balance  of  p02ver^^    -  -  -  -  -  -  -15 

Pecuniary  interest — Employment  for  the  higher  ranks  of  society         -         18 
Jimbition — Private  purposes  of  state  policy    -  -  -  -         20 

Military  glory  _-.-.--24 

Foundation  of  military  glory — Skill — Bravery — Patriotism — 
Patriotism  not  a  motive  to  the  soldier. 
Books — Historians — Poets        __.--_         3^? 

Writers  vi^ho  promote  war  sometimes  assert  its  unlawfulness. 

II.— AN  INQUIRY,  &c. 

Palpable  ferocity  of  war  -  -  -  -  -  -40 

Reasonableness  of  the  inquiry  -  -  -  -  -  -41 

Revealed  will  of  God  the  sole  standard  of  decision  -  -  -         42 

Declarations  of  great  men  that  Christianity  prohibits  war  -  -         43 

Christianity     -  .__---         45 

General  character  of  Christianity  -  -  -  -  -         47 

Precepts  and  declarations  of  Jesus  Christ  -  -  -  -         48 

Arguments  that  the  precepts  are  figurative  only         -  -        51 

Precepts  and  declarations  of  the  apostles  -  -  -  -         57 

Objections  to  the  advocate  of  peace  from  passages  of  the  Christian  Scriptures         60 
Prophecies  of  the  Old  Testament  respecting  an  era  of  peace        -  -         67 

Early    Christians — Their  belief— Their    practice — Early    Christian 

writers     --------69 

Mosaic  institutions       -------77 

Example  of  men  of  piety  -  -  -  -  -  -80 

Objections  to  the  advocate  of  peace  from  the  distinction  between  the  duties 

of  private  and  public  life  ------         82 

Mode  of  proving  the  rectitude  of  this  distinction  from  the 

absence  of  a  common  arbitrator  amongst  nations         -  -         83 

Mode  0^  ^TOYing  it  on  the  principles  of  expedie77cy        -  -         84 

Examination  of  the  principles  of  expediency  as  applied  to  war        86 

of  the  mode  of  its  application  -  -  --87 

Univerf,ality  of  Christian  obligation      -  -  -  -  -         90 

2 


Tago 
Dr.  Palei/s  "  Moral  and  Political  P/«7o5o/?%"— Chapter  "  on  War." 

Mode  of  discussing  the  question  of  its  lawfulness  -  -         91  '^' 

This  mode  inconsistent  with  the  professed  principles  of  the 

Moral  Philosophy — with  the  usual  practice  of  the  author  -         93 
Inapplicability  of  the  principles  proposed  by  the  Moral  Phi- 
losophy to  the  purposes  of  life        -  -  -  -         95 

Dr,  Paley'*s  ^^  Evidences  of  Christianity''''  -  -  -  -         96 

Inconsistency  of  its  statements  with  the  principles  of  the 

Moral  Philosophy  ------        98 

Argument  in  favour  of  war  from  the  excess  of  male  births  -  -  100  ^^ 

from  the  lawfulness  of  coercion  on  the  part  of  the  civil  magistrate  101  — 

Right  of  self-defence — Mode  of  maintaining  the  right  from  the   in- 
stincts of  nature  -  -  -  -  -  -  -104  — 

Attack  of  an  assassin — Principles  on  which  killing  an  assas- 
sin is  defended       ..----  106    - 

Consequences  of  these  principles       -  -  -  -  110 

Unconditional  reliance  upon  Providence  on  the  subject  of  defence  -  113 

Safety  of  this  reliance — Evidence  by  experience  in  private 

life — by  national  experience  -  -  -  -  114 

General  observations     -  -  -  -  -  -  -119 

III.— EFFECTS  OF  WAR. 

Social  consequences       -             -             -             -             -  .  -129 

Political  consequences  -            -            -             -            -  -  -131 

Opinions  of  Dr.  Johnson        -            -            -  -  .      132 

Moral  consequences         -           -             -             -             -  -  -133 

UPON   THE    MILITARY    CHARACTER. 

Familiarity  with  human  destruction — with  plunder  -  -  133 

Incapacity  for  regular  pursuits — "  half-pay"  -  -  -  135 
Implicit  submission  to  superiors. 

Its  effects  on  the  independence  of  the  mind  -  -  138 

on  the  moral  character           -            -  -  .  140 

Resignation  of  moral  agency           -            -  -  -  141 

Military  power  despotic     -----  143 

UPON    THE    COMMUNITY. 

Peculiar  contagiousness  of  military  depravity  -  -      146 

Animosity  of  party — Spirit  of  resentment       -  -  .       149 

Privateering — Its  peculiar  atrocity      -  -  -  -  -       150 

Mercenaries — Loan  of  armies  ------       152 

Prayers  for  the  success  of  war  -  -  -  -  -  -       153 

The  duty  of  a  subject  who  believes  that  all  war  is  incompatible  with 

Christianity  -  -  -  -  .  -  -155 

Conclusion       -  -  -  -  .  -  -  -157 


PREFACE. 


The  object  of  the  following  pages  is,  to  give  a  view  of  the 
principal  arguments  which  maintain  the  indefensibility  and  im 
policy  of  war,  and  to  examine  the  reasoning  which  is  advanced 
in  its  favour. 

The  author  has  not  found,  either  in  those  works  which  treat 
exclusively  of  war,  or  in  those  which  refer  to  it  as  part  of  a 
general  system,  any  examination  of  the  question  that  embraced 
it  in  all  its  bearings.  In  these  pages,  therefore,  he  has  attempted, 
not  only  to  inquire  into  its  accordancy  with  Christian  principles, 
and  to  enforce  the  obligation  of  these  principles,  but  to  discuss 
those  objections  to  the  advocate  of  peace  which  are  advanced  by 
philosophy,  and  to  examme  into  the  authority  of  those  which  are 
enforced  by  the  power  of  habit,  and  by  popular  opinion. 

Perhaps  no  other  apology  is  necessary  for  the  intrusion  of  this 
essay  upon  the  public,  than  that  its  subject  is,  in  a  very  high 
degree,  important.  Upon  such  a  subject  as  the  slaughter  of 
mankind,  if  there  be  a  doubt,  however  indeterminate,  whether 
Christianity  does  not  prohibit  it — if  there  be  a  possibility,  how- 
ever remote,  that  the  happiness  and  security  of  a  nation  can  be 
maintained  without  it,  an  examination  of  such  possibility  or 
doubt,  may  reasonably  obtain  our  attention. — The  advocate  of 
peace  is,  however,  not  obliged  to  avail  himself  of  such  consider- 
ations  :  at  least,  if  the  author  had  not  believed  that  much  more 
than  doubt  and  possibility  can  be  advanced  in  support  of  his 
opinions,  this  inquiry  would  not  have  been  offered  to  the  public. 

He  is  far  from  amusing  himself  with  the  expectation  of  a 
general  assent  to  the  truth  of  his  conclusions.     Some  will  pro- 


bably  dispute  the  rectitude  of  the  principles  of  decision,  and  some 
will  dissent  from  the  legitimacy  of  their  application.  Never- 
theless, he  believes  that  the  number  of  those  whose  opinions  will 
accord  with  his  own  is  increasing,  and  will  yet  much  more 
increase  ;  and  this  belief  is  sufficiently  confident  to  induce  him 
to  publish  an  essay  which  will  probably  be  the  subject  of  con- 
tempt to  some  men,  and  of  ridicule  to  others.  But  ridicule  and 
contempt  are  not  potent  reasoners. 

"  Christianity  can  only  operate  as  an  alterative.  By  the  mild 
diffusion  of  its  light  and  influence,  the  minds  of  men  are  insensi- 
bly prepared  to  perceive  and  correct  the  enormities,  which  folly, 
or  wickedness,  or  accident  have  introduced  into  their  public 
establishments."*  It  is  in  the  hope  of  contributing,  in  a  degree 
however  unimportant  or  remote,  to  the  diffusion  of  this  light 
and  influence,  that  the  following  pages  have  been  written. 

For  the  principles  of  this  little  volume,  or  for  its  conclusions, 
no  one  is  responsible  but  the  writer  :  they  are  unconnected  with 
any  society,  benevolent  or  religious.  He  has  not  written  it  for 
a  present  occasion,  or  with  any  view  to  the  present  political 
state  of  Europe.  A  question  like  this  does  not  concern  itself 
with  the  quarrels  of  the  day. 

It  will  perhaps  be  thought  by  some  readers,  that  there  is  con- 
tained, in  the  following  pages,  greater  severity  of  animadversion 
than  becomes  an  advocate  of  peace.  But,  "  let  it  be  remembered, 
that  to  bestow  good  names  on  bad  things,  is  to  give  them  a  pass- 
port in  the  world  under  a  delusive  disguise."!  The  writer 
believes  that  wars  are  often  supported,  because  the  system  itself, 
and  the  actions  of  its  agents,  are  veiled  in  glittering  fictions.  He 
has  therefore  attempted  to  exhibit  the  nature  of  these  fictions 
and  of  that  which  they  conceal  ;  and  to  state,  freely  and  honestly, 
both  what  they  are  not,  and  what  they  are.  In  this  attempt  it 
has  been  difficult — perhaps  it  has  not  been  possible— to  avoid 

*  Paley's  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy.  f  Knox's  Essays,  No.  34. 


G 

some  appearance  of  severity  :  but  he  would  beg  the  reader  always 
to  bear  in  his  recollection^  that  if  he  speaks  with  censure  of  any 
class  of  men,  he  speaks  of  them  only  as  a  class.  He  is  far  from 
giving  to  such  censure  an  individual  application :  Such  an  appli- 
cation would  be  an  outrage  of  all  candour  and  all  justice.  If 
again  he  speaks  of  war  as  criminal,  he  does  not  attach  guilt, 
necessarily,  to  the  profession  of  arms.  He  can  suppose  that 
many  who  engage  in  the  dreadful  work  of  human  destruction, 
may  do  it  without  a  consciousness  of  impropriety,  or  with  a 
belief  of  its  virtue.  But  truth  itself  is  unalterable  :  whatever  be 
our  conduct,  and  whatever  our  opinions,  and  whether  we  per- 
ceive its  principles  or  not,  those  principles  are  immutable  ;  and 
the  illustration  of  truth,  so  far  as  he  has  the  power  of  discovering 
it,  is  the  object  of  the  Inquiry  which  he  now  offers  to  the  public. 


I. 


OBSERVATIONS  ON  THE  CAUSES  OF  WAR. 


Felix,  qui  potuit  rerum  cognoscere  causas. — Virg. 


In  the  attempt  to  form  an  accurate  estimate  of  the 
moral  character  of  human  actions  and  opinions,  it  is 
often  of  importance  to  inquire  how  they  have  been  pro- 
duced. There  is  always  great  reason  to  doubt  the  rec- 
titude of  that,  of  which  the  causes  and  motives  are 
impure ;  and  if,  therefore,  it  should  appear  from  the 
observations  which  follow,  that  some  of  the  motives  to 
war,  and  of  its  causes,  are  inconsistent  with  reason  or 
with  virtue,  I  would  invite  the  reader  to  pursue  the 
inquiry  that  succeeds  them,  with  suspicion,  at  least,  of 
the  rectitude  of  our  ordinary  opinions. 

There  are  some  customs  wliich  have  obtained  so 
generally  and  so  long,  that  what  was  originally  an  effect 
becomes  a  cause,  and  what  was  a  cause  becomes  an 
effect,  until,  by  the  reciprocal  influence  of  each,  the 
custom  is  continued  by  circumstances  so  multipbed  and 
involved,  that  it  is  difficult  to  detect  them  in  all  their 
ramifications,  or  to  determine  those  to  which  it  is  prin- 
cipally to  be  referred. 

What  were  once  the  occasions  of  wars  may  be  easily 
supposed. — Robbery,  or  the  repulsion  of  robbers,  was 
probably   the  only  motive  to   hostility,  until  robbery 

B  ^ 


10 

became  refined  into  ambition,  and  it  was  sufficient  to 
produce  a  war  that  a  chief  was  not  content  with  the  ter- 
ritory of  his  fathers.  But  by  the  gradually  increasing 
complication  of  society  from  age  to  age,  and  by  the 
multiplication  of  remote  interests  and  obscure  rights, 
the  motives  to  war  have  become  so  numerous  and  so 
technical,  that  ordinary  observation  often  fails  to  per- 
ceive what  they  are.  They  are  sometimes  known  only 
to  a  cabinet,  which  is  influenced  in  its  decision  by  rea- 
sonings of  which  a  nation  knows  little,  or  by  feelings 
of  which  it  knows  nothing  :  so  that  of  those  who  per- 
sonally engage  in  hostilities,  there  is,  perhaps,  not 
often  one  in  ten  who  can  distinctly  tell  why  he  is 
fighting. 

This  refinement  in  the  motives  of  war  is  no  trifling 
evidence  that  they  are  insufficient  or  bad.  When  it  is 
considered  how  tremendous  a  battle  is,  how  many  it 
hurries  in  a  moment  from  the  world,  how  much  wretch- 
edness and  how  much  guilt  it  produces,  it  would  surely 
appear  that  nothing  but  obvious  necessity  should  induce 
us  to  resort  to  it.  But  when,  instead  of  a  battle,  we 
have  a  war  with  many  battles,  and  of  course  with  mul- 
tiplied suffering  and  accumulated  guilt,  the  motives  to 
so  dreadful  a  measure  ought  to  be  such  as  to  force  them- 
selves upon  involuntary  observation,  and  to  be  written, 
as  it  w^ere,  in  the  skies.  If,  then,  a  large  proportion  of 
a  people  are  often  without  any  distinct  perception  of 
the  reasons  why  they  are  slaughtering  mankind,  it 
implies,  I  think,  prima  facie  evidence  against  the  ade- 
quacy or  the  justice  of  the  motives  to  slaughter. 

It  would  not,  perhaps,  be  affectation  to  say,  that  of 
the  reasons  why  we  so  readily  engage  in  war,  one  of 
the  principal  is,  that  we  do  not  inquire  into  the  subject. 
We  have  been  accustomed,  from  earliest  life,  to  a 
familiarity  with  all  its   ''  pomp  and   circumstance ;" 


11 

soldiers  have  passed  us  at  every  step,  and  battles-  ^nd 
victories  have  been  the  topic  of  every  one  around  us. 
War,  therefore,  becomes  familiarized  to  all  our  thoughts, 
and  interwoven  v^ith  all  our  associations.  We  have 
never  inquired  whether  these  things  should  be  :  the 
question  does  not  even  suggest  itself.  We  acquiesce 
in  it,  as  we  acquiesce  in  the  rising  of  the  sun,  without 
any  other  idea  than  that  it  is  a  part  of  the  ordinary 
process  of  the  world.  And  how  are  we  to  feel  dis- 
approbation of  a  system  that  we  do  not  examine,  and 
of  the  nature  of  which  we  do  not  think?  Want  of 
inquiry  has  been  the  means  by  which  long  continued 
practices,  whatever  has  been  their  enormity,  have  ob- 
tained the  general  concurrence  of  the  world,  and  by 
which  they  have  continued  to  pollute  or  degrade  it, 
long  after  the  few  who  inquire  into  their  nature  have 
discovered  them  to  be  bad.  It  was  by  these  means 
that  the  slave-trade  was  so  long  tolerated  by  this  land 
of  humanity.  Men  did  not  think  of  its  iniquity.  We 
were  induced  to  think,  and  we  soon  abhorred  and  then 
abolished  it.  In  the  present  moral  state  of  the  world, 
therefore,  I  believe  it  is  the  business  of  him  who  would 
perceive  pure  morality,  to  question  the  purity  of  that 
which  now  obtains. 

''  The  vices  of  another  age,"  says  Robertson,  "asto- 
nish and  shock  us ;  the  vices  of  our  own  become  familiar, 
and  excite  little  horror." — "  The  influence  of  any  na 
tional  custom,  both  on  the  understanding,  on  the  heart, 
and  how  far  it  may  go  towards  perverting  or  extin- 
guishing moral  principles  of  the  greatest  importance, 
is  remarkable.  They  who  [in  1566]  had  leisure  to 
reflect  and  to  judge,  appear  to  be  no  more  shocked  at 
the  crime  of  assassination,  than  the  persons  who  com- 
mitted it  in  the  heat  and  impetuosity  of  passion."* 

♦  History  of  Scotland. 


12 

Two  hundred  and  fifty  years  have  added  something  to 
our  morality.  We  have  learnt,  at  least,  to  abhor  assas- 
sination ;  and  I  am  not  afraid  to  hope  that  the  time 
will  arrive  when  historians  shall  think  of  war  what 
Robertson  thinks  of  murder,  and  shall  endeavour,  like 
him,  to  account  for  the  ferocity  and  moral  blindness 
of  their  forefathers.  For  I  do  not  think  the  influence 
of  habit  in  the  perversion  or  extinction  of  our  moral 
principles,  is  in  any  other  thing  so  conspicuous  or 
deplorable,  as  in  the  subject  before  us.  They  who  are 
shocked  at  a  single  murder  in  the  highway,  hear  with 
indifference  of  the  murder  of  a  thousand  on  the  field. 
They  whom  the  idea  of  a  single  corpse  would  thrill 
with  terror,  contemplate  that  of  heaps  of  human  car- 
casses, mangled  by  human  hands,  with  frigid  indiffer- 
ence. If  a  murder  is  committed,  the  narrative  is  given 
in  the  public  newspaper,  with  many  expressions  of 
commiseration,  with  many  adjectives  of  horror,  and 
many  hopes  that  the  perpetrator  will  be  detected.  In 
the  next  paragraph  the  editor,  perhaps,  tells  us  that  he 
has  hurried  a  second  edition  to  the  press,  in  order  that 
he  may  be  the  first  to  glad  the  public  with  the  intelli- 
gence, that  in  an  engagement  which  has  just  taken 
place,  eight  liundred  and  fifty  of  the  enemy  were  hilled. 
By  war,  the  natural  impulses  of  the  heart  seem  to  be 
suspended,  as  if  a  fiend  of  blood  were  privileged  to 
exercise  a  spell  upon  our  sensibilities,  whenever  w^e 
contemplated  his  ravages.  Amongst  all  the  shocking 
and  all  the  terrible  scenes  the  world  exhibits,  the 
slaughters  of  war  stand  pre-eminent ;  yet  these  are  the 
scenes  of  which  the  compassionate  and  the  ferocious, 
the  good  and  the  bad,  alike  talk  with  complacency  or 
exultation. 

England  is  a  land  of  benevolence,  and  to  human 
misery  she  is,  of  all  nations,  the  most  prompt  in  the 


13 

extension  of  relief.  The  immolations  of  the  Hindoos 
fill  us  with  compassion  or  horror,  and  we  are  zealously 
labouring  to  prevent  them.  The  sacrifices  of  life  by 
our  own  criminal  executions  are  the  subject  of  our 
anxious  commiseration,  and  we  are  strenuously  en- 
deavouring to  diminish  their  number.  We  feel  that 
the  life  of  a  Hindoo  or  a  malefactor  is  a  serious  thinof, 
and  that  nothing  but  imperious  necessity  should  in- 
duce us  to  destroy  the  one,  or  to  permit  the  destruction 
of  the  other.  Yet  what  are  these  sacrifices  of  life  in 
comparison  with  the  sacrifices  of  war?  In  the  late 
campaign  in  Russia,  there  fell,  during  one  hundred  and 
seventy-three  days  in  succession,  an  average  of  two 
thousand  nine  hundred  men  per  day.  More  than  five 
hundred  thousand  human  beings  in  less  than  six 
months !  And  most  of  these  victims  expired  with  pe- 
culiar intensity  of  suffering.  "Thou  that  teachest 
another,  teachest  thou  not  tiiyself  ?"  We  are  carrying 
our  benevolence  to  the  Indies,  but  what  becomes  of 
it  in  Russia  or  at  Leipsic  ?  We  are  labouring  to  save 
a  few  lives  from  the  gallows,  but  where  is  our  solici- 
tude to  save  them  on  the  field  ?  Life  is  life,  where- 
soever it  be  sacrificed,  and  has  every  where  equal 
claims  to  our  regard.  I  am  not  now  inquiring  whether 
war  is  right,  but  whether  we  do  not  regard  its  calami* 
ties  with  an  indifi'erence  with  which  we  reo^ard  no 
others,  and  whether  that  indifference  does  not  make  us 
acquiesce  in  evils  and  in  miseries  which  we  should 
otherwise  prevent  or  condemn. 

Amongst  the  immediate  causes  of  the  frequency  of 
war,  there  is  one  which  is,  indisputably,  irreconcilable 
in  its  nature  with  the  principles  of  our  religion.  1 
speak  of  the  critical  sense  of  national  pride,  and  conse- 
quent aptitude  of  offence,  and  violence  of  resentment. 
National  irritability  is  at  once  a  cause  of  war,  and  an 


14 

efiect.  It  disposes  us  to  resent  injuries  with  bloodshed 
and  destruction ;  and  a  war,  when  it  is  begun,  inflames 
and  perpetuates  the  passions  that  produced  it.  Those 
who  wish  a  war,  endeavour  to  rouse  the  spirit  of  a 
people  by  stimulating  their  passions.  They  talk  of  the 
insult,  or  the  encroachments,  or  the  contempts  of  the 
destined  enemy,  with  every  artifice  of  aggravation ; 
they  tell  us  of  foreigners  who  want  to  trample  upon  our 
rights,  of  rivals  who  ridicule  our  power,  of  foes  who  will 
crush,  and  of  tyrants  who  will  enslave  us.  These  men 
pursue  their  object,  certainly,  by  efficacious  means ; 
they  desire  a  war,  and  therefore  irritate  our  passions, 
knowing  that  when  men  are  angry  they  are  easily 
persuaded  to  fight. 

In  this  state  of  irritability,  a  nation  is  continually 
alive  to  occasions  of  offence;  and  when  we  seek  for 
offences,  we  readily  find  them.  A  jealous  sensibility 
sees  insults  and  injuries  where  sober  eyes  see  nothing  ; 
and  nations  thus  surround  themselves  with  a  sort  of 
artificial  tentacula,  which  they  throw  wide  in  quest  of 
irritation,  and  by  which  they  are  stimulated  to  revenge, 
by  every  touch  of  accident  or  inadvertency. 

He  that  is  easily  offended  will  also  easily  offend. 
The  man  who  is  always  on  the  alert  to  discover  tres 
passes  on  his  honour  or  his  rights,  never  fails  to  quarrel 
with  his  neighbours.  Such  a  person  may  be  dreaded 
as  a  torpedo.  We  may  fear,  but  we  shall  not  love  him ; 
and  fear,  without  love,  easily  lapses  into  enmity.  There 
are,  therefore,  many  feuds  and  litigations  in  the  life  of 
such  a  man,  that  would  never  have  disturbed  its  quiet, 
if  he  had  not  captiously  snarled  at  the  trespasses  of 
accident,  and  savagely  retaliated  insignificant  injuries. 
The  viper  that  we  chance  to  molest,  we  suffer  to  live 
if  he  continue  to  be  quiet ;  but  if  he  raise  himself  in 
menaces  of  destruction,  we  knock  him  on  the  head. 


15 

It  is  with  nations  as  with  men.  If,  on  every  offence 
we  fly  to  arms,  and  raise  the  cry  of  blood,  we  shall  of 
necessity  provoke  exasperation;  and  if  we  exasperate 
a  people  as  petulant  and  bloody  as  ourselves,  we  may 
probably  continue  to  butcher  one  another,  until  we 
cease  only  from  emptiness  of  exchequers,  or  weariness 
of  slaughter.  To  threaten  war,  is  therefore  oftea  equi- 
valent to  beginning  it.  In  the  present  state  of  men's 
principles,  it  is  not  probable  that  one  nation  will  observe 
another  levying  men,  and  building  ships,  and  founding 
cannon,  without  providing  men  and  ships  and  cannon 
themselves ;  and  when  both  are  thus  threatening  and 
defying,  what  is  the  hope  that  there  will  not  be  a  war  ? 

It  will  scarcely  be  disputed  that  we  should  not  kill 

one  another  unless  we  cannot  help  it.    Since  war  is  an 

enormous  evil,  some  sacrifices  are   expedient  for  the 

sake  of  peace;  and  if  we  consulted  our  understandings 

more  and  our  passions  less,  we  should  soberly  balance 

the  probabilities  of  mischief,  and  inquire  whether  it 

be  not  better  to  endure  some  evils  that  we  can  estimate, 

than  to  engage  in  a  conflict  of  which  we  can  neither 

calculate  the  mischief,  nor  foresee  the  event ;  which 

may  probably  conduct  us  from  slaughter  to  disgrace, 

and  which  at  last  is  determined,  not  by  justice,  but  by 

power.     Pride  may  declaim  against  these  sentiments ; 

but  my  business  is  not  ^iih. pride,  but  with  reason;  and 

I  think  reason  determines  that  it  would  be  more  wise, 

and  religion  that  it  would  be  less  wicked,  to  diminish 

our  punctiliousness  and  irritability.     If  nations  fought 

only  when  they  could  not  be  at  peace,  there  would  be 

very  little  fighting  in  the  world.     The  wars  that  are 

waged  for  "  insults  to  flags,"  and  an  endless  train  of 

similar  motives,  are  perhaps  generally  attributable  to 

the  irritability  of  our  pride.      We  are  at  no  pains  to 

appear  pacific  towards  the  offender ;  our  remonstrance 
B 


16 

is  a  threat;  and  the  nation,  which  would  give  satis- 
faction to  an  inqidry,  will  give  no  other  answer  to 
a  menace  than  a  menace  in  return.  At  length  we 
begin  to  fight,  not  because  we  are  aggrieved,  but  be- 
cause we  are  angry. 

The  object  of  the  haughtiness  and  petulance  which 
one  nation  uses  towards  another,  is  of  course  to  produce 
some  benefit;  to  awe  into  compliance  with  its  demands, 
or  into  forbearance  from  aggression.  Nov/  it  ought  to 
be  distinctly  shown,  that  petulance  and  haughtiness 
are  more  efficacious  than  calmness  and  moderation ; 
that  an  address  to  the  passions  of  a  probable  enemy  is 
more  likely  to  avert  mischief  from  ourselves,  than  an 
address  to  their  reason  and  their  virtue.  Nations  are 
composed  of  men,  and  of  men  with  human  feelings. 
Whether  with  individuals  or  with  communities,  *'  a 
soft  answer  turneth  away  wrath."  There  is,  indeed, 
something  in  the  calmness  of  reason — in  an  endeavour 
to  convince  rather  than  to  intimidate — in  an  honest 
solicitude  for  friendliness  and  peace,  which  obtains, 
which  commands,  which  extorts  forbearance  and  es- 
teem. This  is  the  privilege  of  rectitude  and  truth. 
It  is  an  inherent  quality  of  their  nature  ;  an  evidence 
of  their  identity  with  perfect  wisdom.  I  believe,  there- 
fore, that  even  as  it  concerns  our  interests^  moderation 
and  forbearance  would  be  the  most  politic.  And  let 
not  our  duties  be  forgotten ;  for  forbearance  and  mode- 
ration are  duties,  absolutely  and  indispensably  imposed 
upon  us  by  Jesus  Christ. 

The  "  balance  of  power"  is  a  phrase  with  which  we 
are  made  sufficiently  famiUar,  as  one  of  the  great  objects 
of  national  policy,  that  must  be  attained,  at  whatever 
cost  of  treasure  or  of  blood.  The  support  of  this  ba- 
lance, therefore,  is  one  of  the  great  purposes  of  war, 
and  one  of  the  great  occasions  of  its  frequency. 


17 

It  is,  perhaps,  not  idle  to  remark,  that  a  balance  of 
power  amongst  nations,  is  inherently  subject  to  con- 
tinual interruption.  If  all  the  countries  of  Europe 
were  placed  on  an  equality  to-day,  they  would  of  neces- 
sity become  unequal  to-morrow.  This  is  the  inevitable 
tendency  of  human  affairs.  Thousands  of  circum- 
stances which  sagacity  cannot  foresee,  will  continually 
operate  to  destroy  an  equilibrium.  Of  men,  who  enter 
the  world  with  the  same  possessions  and  the  same 
prospects,  one  becomes  rich  and  the  other  poor;  one 
harangues  in  the  senate,  and  another  labours  in  a 
mine ;  one  sacrifices  his  life  to  intemperance,  and 
another  starves  in  a  garret.  How  accurately  soever  we 
may  adjust  the  strength  and  consequence  of  nations  to 
each  other,  the  failure  of  one  harvest,  the  ravages  of 
one  tempest,  the  ambition  of  one  man,  may  unequalize 
them  in  a  moment.  It  is,  therefore,  not  a  trifling 
argument  against  this  anxious  endeavour  to  attain  an 
equipoise  of  power,  to  find  that  no  equipoise  can  be 
maintained.  When  negotiation  has  followed  negotia- 
tion, and  treaty  has  been  piled  upon  treaty,  and  war 
has  succeeded  to  war,  the  genius  of  a  Napoleon,  or  the 
fate  of  an  armada,  nullifies  our  labours  without  the  pos- 
sibility of  prevention.  I  do  not  know  how  much 
nations  have  gained  by  a  balance  of  power,  but  it  is 
worth  remembrance  that  some  of  those  countries  which 
have  been  most  solicitous  to  preserve  it,  have  been  most 
frequently  fighting  with  each  other.  How  many  wars 
has  a  balance  of  power  prevented,  in  comparison  with 
the  number  that  have  been  waged  to  maintain  it? 

It  is,  indeed,  deplorable  enough  that  such  a  balance 
is  to  be  desired;  and  that  the  wickedness  and  violence 
of  mankind  are  so  great,  that  nothing  can  prevent  them 
from  destroying  one  another,  but  an  equality  of  the 
means  of  destruction.     In  such  a  state  of  malignity  and 

C 


1« 

outrage,  it  need  not  be  disputed,  that,  if  it  could  be 
maintained,  an  equality  of  strength  is  sufficiently  desi- 
rable ;  as  tigers  may  be  restrained  from  tearing  one 
another  by  mutual  fear,  without  any  want  of  savage- 
ness.  It  should  be  remembered,  then,  that  whatever 
can  be  said  in  favour  of  a  balance  of  power,  can  be  said 
only  because  we  are  wicked ;  that  it  derives  all  its  value 
from  our  crimes ;  and  that  it  is  wanted  only  to  restrain 
the  outrage  of  our  violence,  and  to  make  us  contented 
to  growl  when  we  should  otherwise  fight. 

Wars  are  often  promoted  from  considerations  of 
interest,  as  well  as  from  passion.  The  love  of  gain 
adds  its  influence  to  our  other  motives  to  support  them, 
and  without  other  motives,  we  know  that  this  love  is 
sufficient  to  give  great  obliquity  to  the  moral  judgment, 
and  to  tempt  us  to  many  crimes.  During  a  war  of  ten 
years,  there  will  always  be  many  whose  income  de- 
pends on  its  continuance ;  and  a  countless  host  of  com- 
missaries, and  purveyors,  and  agents,  and  mechanics, 
commend  a  war,  because  it  fills  their  pockets.  These 
men  have  commonly  but  one  question  respecting  a 
war,  and  that  is, — whether  they  get  by  it.  This  is  the 
standard  of  their  decision,  and  this  regulates  the  mea- 
sure of  their  support.  If  money  is  in  prospect,  the 
desolation  of  a  kingdom  is  of  little  concern ;  destruc- 
tion and  slaughter  are  not  to  be  put  in  competition 
with  a  hundred  a  year.  In  truth,  it  seems  to  be  the 
system  of  the  conductors  of  a  war,  to  give  to  the  sources 
of  gain  every  possible  ramification.  The  more  there 
are  who  profit  by  it,  the  more  numerous  will  be  its 
supporters ;  and  thus  the  wishes  of  the  cabinet  become 
united  with  the  avarice  of  the  people,  and  both  are 
gratified  in  slaughter  and  devastation. 

A  support  more  systematic  and  powerful  is,  however, 
given  to  war,  because  it  offers  to  the  higher  ranks  of 


•  19 

society,  a  profession  which  unites  gentility  with  profit, 
and  which,  without  the  vulgarity  of  trade,  maintains  or 
enriches  them.  It  is  of  Uttle  consequence  to  inquire 
whether  the  distinction  of  vulgarity  between  the  toils 
of  war  and  the  toils  of  commerce,  be  fictitious.  In  the 
abstract,  it  is  fictitious ;  but  of  this  species  of  reputa- 
tion public  opinion  holds  the  arhitrium,  etjus,  et  norma 
— and  public  opinion  is  in  favour  of  war. 

The  army  and  the  navy  therefore  afford  to  the  middle 
and  higher  classes,  a  most  acceptable  profession.  The 
profession  of  arms  is  like  the  profession  of  law  or 
physic — a  regular  source  of  employment  and  profit. 
Boys  are  educated  for  the  army,  as  they  are  educated 
for  the  bar;  and  parents  appear  to  have  no  other  idea 
than  that  war  is  part  of  the  business  of  the  world.  Of 
ijounger  sons,  whose  fathers  do  not  choose  to  support 
them  at  the  expense  of  the  heir,  the  army  and  the  navy 
are  the  common  resource.  They  would  not  know 
what  to  do  without  them.  To  many  of  these,  the  news 
of  a  peace  becomes  a  calamity  :  principle  is  not  power- 
ful enough  to  cope  with  interest:  they  prefer  the 
desolation  of  the  world,  to  the  loss  of  a  colonelcy.  It 
is  in  this  manner  that  much  of  the  rank,  the  influence, 
and  the  wealth  of  a  country  become  interested  in  the 
promotion  of  wars;  and  when  a  custom  is  promoted  by 
wealth,  and  influence,  and  rank,  what  is  the  wonder 
that  it  should  be  continued  ? 

Yet  it  is  a  dreadful  consideration  that  the  destruc- 
tion of  our  fellows  should  become  a  business  by  which 
to  live  ;  and  that  a  man  can  find  no  other  occupation 
of  gain,  than  that  of  butchering  his  neighbours.  It  is 
said  (if  my  memory  serves  me,  by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh), 
"  he  that  taketh  up  his  rest  to  live  by  this  profession 
shall  hardly  be  an  honest  man." — "  Where  there  is  no- 
obligation  to  obey,''  says  Lord  Clarendon,  ''it  is  a  won- 

B  2 


2a 

derful,  and  an  unnatural  appetite,  that  disposes  men  to 
be  soldiers,  that  they  may  know  how  to  live;  and  what 
reputation  soever  it  may  have  in  poUtics,  it  can  have 
none  in  religion,  to  say,  that  the  art  and  conduct  of  a 
soldier  is  not  infused  by  nature,  but  by  study,  experi- 
ence, and  observation  ;  and  therefore  that  men  are  to 
lear7i  it: — when,  in  truth,  this  common  argument  is 
made  hij  appetite  to  excuse,  and  not  hy  reason  to  support, 
an  ill  custom."*  People  do  not  often  become  soldiers 
in  order  to  serve  their  country,  but  to  serve  themselves. 
An  income  is  commonly  the  motive  to  the  great,  and 
idleness  to  the  poor.  To  plead  the  love  of  our  country 
is  therefore  hypocrisy  ;  and  let  it  be  remembered  that 
h3^pocrisy  is  itself  an  evidence,  and  an  acknowledg- 
ment, that  the  motive  which  it  would  disguise  is  bad. 

By  depending  upon  war  for  a  subsistence,  a  powerful 
inducement  is  given  to  desire  it;  and  I  would  submit 
it  to  the  conscientious  part  of  the  profession,  that  he 
who  desires  a  war  for  the  sake  of  its  profits  has  lost 
something  of  his  virtue :  he  has,  at  least,  enlisted  one 
of  the  most  influential  of  human  propensities  against  it, 
and  when  the  prospect  of  gratification  is  before  him — 
when  the  question  of  war  is  to  be  decided — it  is  to  be 
feared  that  he  will  suffer  the  whispers  of  interest  to 
prevail,  and  that  humanity,  and  religion,  and  his  con- 
science will  be  sacrificed  to  promote  it.  But  whenever 
we  shall  have  learnt  the  nature  of  pure  Christianity,  and 
have  imbibed  its  dispositions,  we  shall  not  be  willing  to 
avail  ourselves  of  such  a  horrible  source  of  profit ;  nor 
to  contribute  to  the  misery,  and  wickedness,  and  de- 
struction of  mankind,  in  order  to  avoid  a  false  and 
foolish  shame. 

It  is  frequently  in  the  power  of  individual  statesmen 
to  involve  a  people  in  a  war.     '^  Their  restraints,"  says 

*  Lord  Clarendon's  Essays. 


21 

Knox,  "  in  the  pursuit  of  political  objects,  are  not  those 
of  morality  and  religion,  but  solely  reasons  of  state,  and 
political  caution.  Plausible  words  are  used,  but  they 
are  used  to  hide  the  deformity  of  the  real  principles. 
Wherever  war  is  deemed  desirable  in  an  interested 
view,  a  specious  pretext  never  yet  remained  un- 
found  ;"* — and  "  when  they  have  once  said  what  they 
think  convenient,  how  untruly  soever,  they  proceed  to 
do  what  they  judge  will  be  profitable,  how  unjustly 
soever  ;  and  this,  men  very  absurdly  and  unreasonably 
would  have  called  reason  of  state ^  to  the  discredit  of  all 
solid  reason,  and  all  rules  of  probity. "f  Statesmen 
have  two  standards  of  morality — a  social  and  a  political 
standard.  Political  morality  embraces  all  crimes; 
except,  indeed,  that  it  has  that  technical  virtue  which 
requires  that  he  who  may  kill  a  hundred  men  with 
bullets,  should  not  kill  one  with  arsenic.  And  from 
this  double  system  of  morals  it  happens,  that  statesmen 
who  have  no  restraint  to  political  enormities  but  politi- 
cal expediency,  are  sufficiently  amiable  in  private  life 
But  "  probity,"  says  Bishop  Watson,  ''  is  an  uniform 
principle ;  it  cannot  be  put  on  in  our  private  closet, 
and  put  off  in  the  council-chamber  or  the  senate  :"  and 
I  fear  that  he  who  is  wicked  as  a  statesman,  if  he  be 
good  as  a  man,  has  some  other  motive  to  goodness  than 
its  love;  that  he  is  decent  in  private  life,  because  it  is 
not  expedient  that  he  should  be  flagitious.  It  cannot 
be  hoped  that  he  has  much  restraint  from  principle.  I 
believe,  however,  the  time  will  come,  when  it  will  be 
found  that  God  has  instituted  but  one  standard  of 
morality,  and  that  to  that  standard  is  required  the 
universal  conformity,  of  nations,  and  of  men. 

Of  the  wars  of  statesmen's  ambition,  it  is  not  necessary 

*  Knox's  Essays.  -j-  Lord  Clarendon's  Essays. 


22 

to  speak,  because  no  one  to  whom  the  world  will  listen, 
is  willing  to  defend  them. 

But  statesmen  have,  besides  ambition,  many  pur- 
poses of  nice  policy  which  make  wars  convenient ;  and 
when  they  have  such  purposes,  they  are  cool  specu- 
lators in   blood.      They   who  have  many  dependants 
have  much  patronage,  and  they  who  have  much  pa- 
tronage have  much  power.     By  a  war,  thousands  be- 
come dependent  on  a  minister  ;  and  if  he  be  disposed, 
he  can  often   pursue  schemes  of  guilt,  and  intrench 
himself  in  unpunished  wickedness,  because  the  war 
enables  him  to  silence  the  clamour  of  opposition  by  an 
office,  and  to  secure  the  suffrages  of  venality  by  a  bribe. 
He  has  therefore  many  motives  to  w^ar,  in  ambition 
that  does  not  refer  to  conquest;  or,  in  fear,  that  extends 
only  to  his  office  or  his  pocket :  and  fear  or  ambition 
are  sometimes  more  interesting  considerations  than  the 
happiness  and  the  lives  of  men.     Or  perhaps  he  wants 
to  immortalize  his  name  by  a  splendid  administration  ; 
and  he  thinks  no  splendour  so  great  as  that  of  conquest 
and  plunder.     Cabinets  have,  in  truth,  many  secret 
motives  of  wars  of  which  the  people  know  little.    They 
talk  in   public  of  invasions   of  right,  of  breaches  of 
treaty,  of  the  support  of  honour,  of  the  necessity  of 
retaliation,  when  these  motives  have  no  influence  on 
their  determination.      Some  untold  purpose  of  expe- 
diency, or  the  private  quarrel  of  a  prince,  or  the  pique 
or  anger  of  a  minister,  are  often  the  real  motives  to 
a  contest,  whilst  its  promoters  are  loudly  talking  of  the 
honour  or- the  safety  of  the  country.     The  motives  to 
war  are  indeed  without  end  to  their  number,  or  their 
iniquity,  or  their  insignificance.    What  was  the  motive 
of  Xerxes  in  his  invasion  of  Greece  ? 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  the  world  has  sometimes  seen 


23 

the  example  of  a  war,  begun  and  prosecuted  for  the 
simple  purpose  of  appeasing  the  clamours  of  a  people 
by  diverting  their  attention  : 

"  I  well  might  lodge  a  fear 
To  be  again  displaced  ;  which,  to  avoid, 
I  cut  them  of!^  and  had  a  purpose  now 
To  lead  out  many  to  the  Holy  Land, 
Lest  rest  and  lying  still  might  make  them  look 
Too  near  into  my  state.     Therefore,  my  Harry, 
Be  it  thy  course  to  busy  giddy  minds 
With  foreign  quarrels  ;  that  action  hence  borne  out 
May  waste  the  memory  of  former  days." 

When  the  profligacy  of  a  minister,  or  the  unpopu 
larity  of  his  measures,  has  excited  public  discontent,  he 
can  perhaps  find  no  other  way  of  escaping  the  resent 
ment  of  the  people,  than  by  thus  making  them  forget 
it.  He  therefore  discovers  a  pretext  for  denouncing 
war  on  some  convenient  country,  in  order  to  divert  the 
indignation  of  the  public  from  himself  to  their  new 
made  enemies.  Such  wickedness  has  existed,  and  may 
exist  again.  Surely  it  is  nearly  the  climax  of  possible 
iniquity.  I  know  not  whether  the  records  of  human 
infamy  present  another  crime  of  such  enormous  or  such 
abandoned  wickedness.  A  monstrous  profligacy  or 
ferocity  that  must  be,  which  for  the  sole  purpose  ot 
individual  interest,  enters  its  closet,  and  coolly  fabri- 
cates pretences  for  slaughter;  that  quietly  contrives 
the  exasperation  of  the  public  hatred,  and  then  flings 
the  lighted  brands  of  war  amongst  the  devoted  and 
startling  people. 

The  public,  therefore,  whenever  a  war  is  designed, 
should  diligently  inquire  into  the  motives  of  engaging 
in  it.  It  should  be  an  inquiry  that  will  not  be  satisfied 
with  idle  declamations  on  indeterminate  dangers,  and 
that  is  not  willing  to  take  any  thing  upon  trust.  The 
public  should  see  the  danger  for  themselves;  and  if 
they  do  not  see  it,  should  refuse  to  be  led,  blindfold,  to 


24 

murder  their  neighbours.  This,  we  think,  is  the  pubhc 
duty,  as  it  is  certainly  the  public  interest.  It  implies 
a  forgetfulness  of  the  ends  and  purposes  of  government, 
and  of  the  just  degrees  and  limitations  of  obedience,  to 
be  hurried  into  so  dreadful  a  measure  as  a  war,  without 
knowing  the  reason,  or  asking  it.  A  people  have  the 
power  of  prevention,  and  they  ought  to  exercise  it. 
Let  me  not,  however,  be  charged  with  recommending 
violence  or  resistance.  The  power  of  preventing  war 
consists  in  the  power  of  refusing  to  take  part  in  it. 
This  is  the  mode  of  opposing  political  evil,  which 
Christianity  permits,  and,  in  truth,  requires.  And  as 
it  is  the  most  Christian  method,  so,  as  it  respects  war, 
it  were  certainly  the  most  efficacious ;  for  it  is  obvious 
that  war  cannot  be  carried  on  without  the  co-operation 
of  the  people. 

But  I  believe  the  greatest  cause  of  the  popularity  of 
war,  and  of  the  facility  with  which  we  engage  in  it, 
consists  in  this;  that  an  idea  of  glory  is  attached  to 
military  exploits,  and  of  honour  to  the  military  pro- 
fession. Something  of  elevation  is  supposed  to  belong 
to  the  character  of  the  soldier  ;  whether  it  be  that  we 
involuntarily  presume  his  personal  courage ;  or  that  he 
who  makes  it  his  business  to  defend  the  rest  of  the 
community,  acquires  the  superiority  of  a  protector; 
or  that  the  profession  implies  an  exemption  from  the 
laborious  and  the  "  meaner"  occupations  of  life.  There 
is  something  in  war,  whether  phantom  or  reality,  which 
glitters  and  allures ;  and  the  allurement  is  powerful, 
since  we  see  that  it  induces  us  to  endure  hardships  and 
injuries,  and  expose  life  to  a  continual  danger.  Men 
do  not  become  soldiers  because  life  is  indifferent  to 
them,  but  because  of  some  extrinsic  circumstances 
which  attach  to  the  profession  ;  and  some  of  the  most 
jnfiuential  of  these  circumstances  are   the  fame,  the 


25 

spirit,  the  honour,  the  glory,  which  mankind  agree  to 
belong  to  the  warrior.  The  glories  of  battle,  and  of 
those  who  perish  in  it,  or  who  return  in  triumph  to  their 
country,  are  favourite  topics  of  declamation  with  the 
historian,  the  biographer,  and  the  poet.  They  have 
told  us  a  thousand  times  of  dying  heroes,  who  *'  resign 
their  lives  amidst  the  joys  of  conquest,  and  filled  with 
England's  glory,  smile  in  death;"  and  thus  every 
excitement  that  eloquence  and  genius  can  command 
is  employed  to  arouse  that  ambition  of  fame  which  can 
be  gratified  only  at  the  expense  of  blood. 

There  are  many  ways  in  which  a  soldier  derives 
pleasure  from  his  profession.  A  military  officer*  when 
he  walks  the  street,  is  an  object  of  notice;  he  is  a  man 
of  spirit,  of  honour,  of  gallantry  ;  wherever  he  be,  he  is 
distinguished  from  ordinary  men;  he  is  an  acknow- 
ledged gentleman.  If  he  engage  in  battle,  he  is  brave, 
and  noble,  and  magnanimous :  If  he  be  killed,  he  has 
died  for  his  country  ;  he  has  closed  his  career  rvith  glory. 
Now  all  this  is  agreeable  to  the  mind  ;  it  flatters  some 
of  its  strongest  and  most  pervading  passions ;  and  the 
gratification  which  these  passions  derive  from  war,  is 
one  of  the  great  reasons  why  men  so  willingly  engage 
in  it. 

Now  we  ask  the  question  of  a  man  of  reason,  what 
is  the  foundation  of  this  fame  and  glory  ?  We  profess 
that,  according  to  the  best  of  our  powers  of  discovery, 
no  solid  foundation  can  be  found.  Upon  the  founda- 
tion, whatever  it  be,  an  immense  structure  is  however 
raised — a  structure  so  vast,  so  brilliant,  so  attractive, 
that  the  greater  portion  of  mankind  are  content  to  gaze 
in  admiration,  without  any  inquiry  into  its  basis,  or 

*  These  observations  apply  also  to  the  naval  profession  ;  but  I  have  in 
this  passage,  as  in  some  other  parts  of  the  Essay,  mentioned  only  soldiers,  to 
prevent  circumlocution. 

D 


26 

any  solicitude  for  its  durability. — If,  however,  it  should 
be,  that  the  gorgeous  temple  will  be  able  to  stand  only 
till  Christian  truth  and  light  become  predominant,  it 
surely  will  be  wise  of  those  who  seek  a  niche  in  its 
apartments  as  their  paramount  and  final  good,  to  pause 
ere  they  proceed.  If  they  desire  a  reputation  that 
shall  outlive  guilt  and  fiction,  let  them  look  to  the  basis 
of  military  fame.  If  this  fame  should  one  day  sink  into 
oblivion  and  contempt,  it  will  not  be  the  first  instance 
in  which  wide-spread  glory  has  been  found  to  be 
a  glittering  bubble,  that  has  burst,  and  been  for- 
gotten. Look  at  the  days  of  chivalry.  Of  the  ten 
thousand  Quixottes  of  the  middle  ages,  where  is  now 
the  honour  or  the  name  ?  Yet  poets  once  sang  their 
praises,  and  the  chronicler  of  their  achievements  be- 
lieved he  was  recording  an  everlasting  fame.  Where 
are  now  the  glories  of  the  tournament  ?     Glories 

"  Of  which  all  Europe  rung  from  side  to  side." 

Where  is  the  champion  whom  princes  caressed,  and 
nobles  envied  ?  Where  are  now  the  triumphs  of  Duns 
Scotus,  and  where  are  the  folios  that  perpetuated  his 
fame  ?  The  glories  of  war  have  indeed  outlived  these. 
Human  passions  are  less  mutable  than  human  follies ; 
but  I  am  willing  to  avow  my  conviction  that  these 
glories  are  alike  destined  to  sink  into  forgetfulness ; 
and  that  the  time  is  approaching,  when  the  applauses 
of  heroism,  and  the  splendours  of  conquest,  will  be 
remembered  only  as  follies  and  iniquities  that  are  past. 
Let  him  who  seeks  for  fame,  other  than  that  which  an 
era  of  Christian  purity  will  allow,  make  haste;  for 
every  hour  that  he  delays  its  acquisition  will  shorten 
its  duration.  This  is  certain,  if  there  be  certainty  in 
the  promises  of  Heaven. 

In  inquiring  into  the  foundation  of  military  glory, 


27 

it  will  be  borne  in  mind,  that  it  is  acknowledged  1  > 
our  adversaries,  that  this  glory  is  not  recognised  by 
Christianitij .  No  part  of  the  heroic  character,  says 
one  of  the  great  advocates  of  war,  is  the  subject  of  the 
*' commendation,  or  precepts,  or  example"  of  Christ; 
but  the  character  and  dispositions  most  opposite  to  the 
heroic  are  the  subject  of  them  all.*  This  is  a  great 
concession  ;  and  it  surely  is  the  business  of  Christians, 
who  are  sincere  in  their  profession,  to  doubt  the  purity 
of  that  ''  glory"  and  the  rectitude  of  that  "heroic  cha- 
racter," which  it  is  acknowledged  that  their  Great 
Instructer  never  in  any  shape  countenanced,  and  often 
obliquely  condemned.! 

If  it  be  attempted  to  define  why  glory  is  allotted  to 
the  soldier,  we  suppose  that  we  shall  be  referred  to  his 
skill,  or  his  bravery,  or  his  patriotism. 

Of  sMll  it  is  not  necessary  to  speak,  since  very  few 
have  the  opportunity  of  displaying  it.  The  business 
of  the  great  majority  is  only  obedience ;  and  obedience 
of  that  sort  which  almost  precludes  the  exercise  of 
talent. 

The  rational  and  immortal  being,  who  raises  the 
edifice  of  his  fame  on  simple  hraverij,  has  chosen  but 
an  unworthy  and  a  frail  foundation.  Separate  bravery 
from  motives  and  purposes,  and  what  will  remain  but 
that  which  is  possessed  by  a  mastiff  or  a  game-cock  ? 
All  just,  all  rational,  and  we  will  venture  to  affirm,  all 
permanent  reputation,  refers  to  the  mind  or  to  virtue ; 
and  what  connexion  has  animal  power  or  animal  hardi- 
hood with  intellect  or  goodness  1  I  do  not  decry  cou- 
rage. I  know  that  He  who  was  better  acquainted  than 
we  are  with  the  nature  and  worth  of  human  actions, 

*  Dr  Paley. 

f  "  Christianity  quite  annihilates  the  disposition  for  martial  glory." — 
Bishop  Watson. 
C 


28 

attached  much  value  to  courage ;  but  he  attached  none 
to  bravery.  Courage  He  recommended  by  his  pre- 
cepts, and  enforced  by  his  example  :  bravery  He  never 
recommended  at  all.  The  w^isdom  of  this  distinction, 
and  its  accordancy  vv'ith  the  principles  of  his  religion, 
are  plain.  Bravery  requires  the  existence  of  many  of 
those  dispositions  which  he  disallowed.  Animosity, 
resentment,  the  desire  of  retaliation,  the  disposition  to 
injure  and  destroy,  all  this  is  necessary  to  bravery; 
but  all  this  is  incompatible  with  Christianity.  The 
courage  which  Christianity  requires  is  to  bravery 
what  fortitude  is  to  daring — an  effort  of  the  mind 
rather  than  of  the  spirits.  It  is  a  calm,  steady  deter- 
minateness  of  purpose,  that  will  not  be  diverted  by 
solicitation,  or  aw^ed  by  fear.  *'  Behold,  I  go  bound  in 
the  spirit  unto  Jerusalem,  not  knowing  the  things  that 
shall  befal  me  there,  save  that  the  Holy  Ghost  witness- 
eth  in  every  city,  saying,  that  bonds  and  afflictions 
abide  me.  But  none  of  these  things  move  me;  neither 
count  I  my  life  dear  unto  my  self ^^  What  resemblance 
has  bravery  to  courage  like  this  ?  This  courage  is  a 
virtue,  and  a  virtue  which  it  is  difficult  to  acquire  or  to 
practise ;  and  we  have,  therefore,  heedlessly  or  inge- 
niously, transferred  its  praise  to  another  quality,  which 
is  inferior  in  its  nature,  and  easier  to  acquire,  in  order 
that  we  may  obtain  the  reputation  of  virtue  at  a  cheap 
rate.  That  simple  bravery  implies  mnch  merit,  it  will 
be  difficult  to  show — at  least,  if  it  be  meritorious,  we 
think  it  will  not  always  be  easy,  in  awarding  the  ho- 
nours of  a  battle,  to  determine  the  preponderance  of 
virtue  between  the  soldier  and  the  horse  which  carries 
him. 

But  patriotism  is  the  great  foundation  of  the  soldier's 
V»*ory.     Patriotism  is  the  universal  theme.     To  **  fight 

*  Acts  XX.  22. 


29 

nobly  for  our  country  ," — to  "  fall,  covered  with  glory, 
in  our  country's  cause ;" — to  "  sacrifice  our  lives  for 
the  liberties,  and  laws,  and  religion  of  our  country" — 
are  phrases  in  the  mouth  of  every  man.  What  do  they 
mean,  and  to  whom  do  they  apply  ? 

We  contend  that  to  saj^  generally  of  those  w^ho  pe- 
rish in  war,  that  ''they  have  died  for  their  country," 
is  simply  untrue;  and  for  this  simple  reason,  that  they 
did  not  fight  for  it.  To  impugn  the  notion  of  ages, 
is  perhaps  a  hardy  task ;  but  we  wish  to  employ,  not 
dogmatism,  but  argument :  and  we  maintain  that  men 
have  commonly  no  such  purity  of  motive,  that  they 
have  no  such  patriotism.  What  is  the  officer's  motive 
to  entering  the  army  ?  We  appeal  to  himself  Is  it 
not  that  he  may  obtain  an  income  ?  And  what  is  the 
motive  of  the  private  ?  Is  it  not  that  he  prefers  a  life  of 
idleness  to  industry,  or  that  he  had  no  wish  but  the  wish 
for  change  ?  Having  entered  the  army,  what,  again, 
is  the  soldier's  motive  to  fight?  Is  it  not  that  fighting 
is  a  part  of  his  business — that  it  is  one  of  the  conditions 
of  his  servitude?  We  are  not  now  saying  that  these 
motives  are  bad,  but  we  are  saying  that  they  are  the 
motives, — and  that  patriotism  is  not.  Of  those  who  fall 
in  battle,  is  there  one  in  a  hundred  who  even  thinks  of 
his  country's  good  ?  He  thinks,  perhaps,  of  its  glory, 
and  of  the  honour  of  his  regiment,  but  for  his  country's 
advantage  or  welfare,  he  has  no  care  and  no  thought. 
He  fights,  because  fighting  is  a  matter  of  course  to  a 
soldier,  or  because  his  personal  reputation  is  at  stake, 
or  because  he  is  compelled  to  fight,  or  because  he 
thinks  nothing  at  all  of  the  matter;  but  seldom,  indeed, 
because  he  wishes  to  benefit  his  country.  He  fights  in 
battle,  as  a  horse  draws  in  a  carriage,  because  he  is 
compelled  to  do  it,  or  because  he  has  done  it  before ; 
but  he  seldom  thinks  more  of  his  country's  good,  than 


30 

the  same  horse,  if  he  were  carrying  corn  to  a  granary- 
would  think  he  was  providing  for  the  comforts  of  his 
master. 

And,  indeed,  if  the  soldier  speculated  on  his  coun 
try's  good,  he  often  cannot  tell  how  it  is  affected  by 
the  quarrel.  Nor  is  it  to  be  expected  of  him  that  he 
should  know  this.  When  there  is  a  rumour  of  a  war, 
there  is  an  endless  diversity  of  opinions  as  to  its  expe- 
diency, and  endless  oppositions  of  conclusion,  whether 
it  will  tend  more  to  the  good  of  the  country,  to  prose- 
cute or  avoid  it.  If  senators  and  statesmen  cannot 
calculate  the  good  or  evil  of  a  war, — if  one  promises 
advantages  and  another  predicts  ruin, — how  is  the  sol- 
dier to  decide  ?  And  without  deciding  and  promoting 
the  good,  how  is  he  to  be  patriotic  ?  Nor  will  much  be 
gained  by  saying,  that  questions  of  policy  form  no  part 
of  his  business,  and  that  he  has  no  other  duty  than 
obedience ;  since  this  is  to  reduce  his  agency  to  the 
agency  of  a  machine  ;  and  moreover,  by  this  rule,  his 
arms  might  be  directed,  indifferently,  to  the  annoy 
ance  of  another  country,  or  to  the  oppression  of  his 
own.  The  truth  is,  that  we  give  to  the  soldier  that 
of  which  we  are  wont  to  be  sufficiently  sparing — a 
gratuitous  concession  of  merit.  In  ordinary  life,  an 
individual  maintains  his  individual  opinions,  and  pur- 
sues correspondent  conduct,  with  the  approbation  of 
one  set  of  men,  and  the  censures  of  another.  One 
party  says,  he  is  benefiting  his  country,  and  another 
maintains  that  he  is  ruining  it.  But  the  soldier,  for 
whatever  he  fights,  and  whether  really  in  promotion 
of  his  country's  good,  or  in  opposition  to  it,  is  always 
a  patriot,  and  is  always  secure  of  his  praise.  If  the 
war  is  a  national  calamity,  and  was  foreseen  to  be 
such,  still  he  fights  for  his  country.  If  his  judgment 
has  decided  against  the  war,  and  against  its  justice  or 


31 

expediency,  still  he  fights  for  his  country.  He  is 
always  virtuous.  If  he  but  uses  a  bayonet,  he  is 
always  a  patriot. 

To  sacrifice  our  lives  for  the  liberties,  and  laws,  and 
religion  of  our  native  land,  are  undoubtedly  high- 
sounding  words  : — but  who  are  they  that  will  do  it? 
Who  is  it  that  will  sacrifice  his  life  for  his  country  T 
Will  the  senator  who  supports  a  war  ?  Will  the  writer 
who  declaims  upon  patriotism  ?  Will  the  minister 
of  religion  who  recommends  the  sacrifice  ?  Take 
away  glory — take  away  war,  and  there  is  not  a  man  of 
them  who  will  do  it.  Will  you  sacrifice  your  life  at 
hjome  ?  If  the  loss  of  your  life  in  London  or  at  York, 
would  procure  just  so  much  benefit  to  your  country, 
as  the  loss  of  one  soldier  in  the  field,  would  you  be 
willing  to  lay  your  head  upon  the  block?  Are  you 
willing  to  die  without  notice  and  without  remembrance ; 
and  for  the  sake  of  this  little  undiscoverable  contribution 
to  your  country's  good.  You  would,  perhaps,  die  to 
save  your  country  ;  but  this  is  not  the  question.  A 
soldier's  death  does  not  save  his  country.  The  ques- 
tion is,  whether,  without  any  of  the  circumstances  of 
war,  without  any  of  its  glory  or  its  pomp,  you  are  wil- 
ling to  resign  yourself  to  the  executioner.  If  you  are 
not,  you  are  not  willing  to  die  for  your  country.  And 
there  is  not  an  individual  amongst  the  thousands  who 
declaim  upon  patriotism,  who  is  willing  to  do  it.  He 
will  lay  down  his  life,  indeed- — but  it  must  be  in  war  : 
He  is  willing  to  die — but  it  is  not  for  patriotism,  but 
for  glory. 

The  argument  we  think  is  clear — that  patriotism  is 
NOT  the  m(»tive;  and  that  in  no  rational  use  of  language 
can  it  be  said  that  the  soldier  ''  dies  for  his  country." 
Men  will  not  sacrifice  their  lives  at  all,  unless  it  be  in 

C2 


32 

war,  and  they  do  not  sacrifice  them  in  war  from  mo- 
tives of  patriotism.* 

What  then  is  the  foundation  of  military  fame  ?  Is  it 
bravery  ?  Bravery  has  Uttle  connexion  with  reason, 
and  less  with  religion.  Intellect  may  despise,  and 
Christianity  condemns  it.  Is  it  patriotism  ?  Do  we 
refer  to  the  soldier's  motives  and  purposes  ?  If  we  do, 
he  is  not  necessarily,  or  often,  a  patriot.  It  was  a 
common  expression  amongst  sailors,  and,  perhaps,  may 
be  so  still — ''  I  hate  the  French,  because  they  are 
slaves,  and  wear  wooden  shoes."  This  was  the  sum 
of  their  reasonings  and  their  patriotism ;  and  I  do  not 
think  the  mass  of  those  who  fight  on  land,  possess  a 
greater. 

Crimes  should  be  traced  to  their  causes:  and  guilt 
should  be  fixed  upon  those  who  occasion,  although 
they  may  not  perpetrate  them.  And  to  whom  are  the 
frequency  and  the  crimes  of  war  to  be  principally  at- 
tributed ?     To  the  directors  of  public  opinion,  to  the 

*  We  know  that  there  may  be,  and  have  been,  cases  in  which  the  soldier 
possesses  purer  motives.  An  invasion  may  rouse  the  national  patriotism  and 
arm  a  people  for  the  unmingled  purpose  of  defending  themselves.  Here  is 
a  definite  purpose,  a  purpose  which  every  individual  understands  and  is 
interested  in  :  and  if  he  die  under  such  circumstances,  we  do  not  deny  that 
his  motives  are  patriotic.  The  actions  to  which  they  prompt,  are,  however, 
a  separate  consideration,  and  depend  for  their  qualities  on  the  rectitude  of 
war  itself.  Motives  may  be  patriotic,  when  actions  are  bad.  I  might, 
perhaps,  benefit  my  country  by  blowing-  up  a  fleet,  of  which  the  cargo  would 
injure  our  commerce.    My  motive  may  be  patriotic,  but  my  action  is  vicious. 

It  is  not  sufficiently  borne  in  mind,  that  patriotism,  even  much  purer  than 
this,  is  not  necessarily  a  virtue.  "  Christianity,"  says  Bishop  Watson, 
*'  does  not  encourage  particular  patriotism,  in  opposition  to  general  benig- 
rtity."  And  the  reason  is  easy  of  discovery.  Christianity  is  designed  to 
benefit,  not  a  community,  but  the  world,  if  it  unconditionally  encouraged 
particular  patriotism,  the  duties  of  a  subject  of  one  state  would  often  be  in 
opposition  to  those  of  a  subject  of  another.  Christianity,  however,  knows 
no  such  inconsistencies ;  and  whatever  patriotism,  therefore,  is  opposed,  in 
its  exercise,  to  the  general  welfare  of  mankind,  is,  in  nc  degree,  a  virtue. 


33 

declaimers  upon  glory : — to  men  who  sit  quietly  at 
home  in  their  studies  and  at  their  desks ;  to  the  his- 
torian, and  the  biographer,  and  the  poet,  and  the  moral 
philosopher  ;  to  the  pamphleteer ;  to  the  editor  of  the 
newspaper  ;  to  the  teacher  of  religion.  One  example 
of  declamation  from  the  pulpit  I  would  oifer  to  the 
reader  : — "  Go  then,  ye  defenders  of  your  country ; 
advance,  with  alacrity,  into  the  field,  where  God  him- 
self musters  the  hosts  to  war.  Religion  is  too  much 
interested  in  your  success,  not  to  lend  you  her  aid. 
She  will  shed  over  this  enterprise  her  selectest  influence 
I  cannot  but  imagine,  the  virtuous  heroes,  legislators, 
and  patriots,  of  every  age  and  country,  are  bending 
from  their  elevated  seats  to  witness  this  contest,  as  if 
they  were  incapable,  till  it  be  brought  to  a  favourable 
issue,  of  enjoying  their  eternal  repose.  Enjoy  that 
repose,  illustrious  immortals  !  Your  mantle  fell  when 
you  ascended,  and  thousands,  inflamed  with  spirit,  and 
impatient  to  tread  in  your  steps,  are  ready  to  swear 
by  Him  that  sitteth  upon  the  throne,  and  liveth  for 
ever  and  ever,  they  will  protect  freedom  in  her  last 
asylum,  and  never  desert  that  cause  which  you  sus- 
tained by  your  labours,  and  cemented  with  your  blood. 
And  thou,  sole  Ruler  among  the  children  of  men,  to 
whom  the  shields  of  the  earth  belong, — Gird  on  thy 
sword,  thou  most  Mighty.  Go  forth  with  our  hosts  in 
the  day  of  battle  !  Impart,  in  addition  to  their  heredi- 
tary valour,  that  confidence  of  success  which  springs 
from  thy  presence  !  Pour  into  their  hearts  the  spirit 
of  departed  heroes!  Inspire  them  with  thine  own; 
and  while  led  by  thine  hand,  and  fighting  under  thy 
banners,  open  thou  their  eyes  to  behold  in  every  val- 
ley, and  in  every  plain,  what  the  prophet  beheld  by 
the  same  illumination — chariots  of  fire,  and  horses  of 
fire.     Then  shall  the  strong  man  be  as  tow,  and  the 

E 


34 

maker  of  it  as  a  spark;  and  they  shall  both  bum 
together,  and  none  shall  quench  them!"*  Of  such 
irreverence  of  language,  employed  to  convey  such 
violence  of  sentiment,  the  world,  I  hope,  has  had  few- 
examples.  Oh !  how  unlike  another  exhortation — 
''  Put  on  mercies,  kindness,  humbleness  of  mind,  meek- 
ness, long-suffering,  forbearing  one  another,  and  for- 
giving one  another,  if  any  man  have  a  quarrel  against 

any."t 

''  As  long  as  mankind,"  says  Gibbon,  "  shall  con- 
tinue to  bestow  more  liberal  applause  on  their  destroy- 
ers than  on  their  benefactors,  the  thirst  of  military 
glory  will  ever  be  the  vice  of  the  most  exalted  charac- 
ters."} *''Tis  strange  to  imagine,"  says  the  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury,  "  that  war,  which  of  all  things  appears 
the  most  savage,  should  be  the  passion  of  the  most 
heroic  spirits." — But  he  gives  us  the  reason. — ''  By  a 
small  misguidance  of  the  affection,  a  lover  of  mankind 
becomes   a  ravager ;    a  hero   and  deliverer   becomes 

*  "  The  Sentiments  proper  to  the  Crisis."— A  Sermon,  preached  October 
19,  1803,  by  Robert  Hall,  A.M. 

j-  Nor  is  the  preacher  inconsistent  with  Apostles  alone.  He  is  also  incon- 
sistent with  himself.  In  another  discourse,  delivered  in  the  preceding  yeai 
he  says  : — "  The  safety  of  nations  is  not  to  be  sought  in  arts  or  in  arms. 
War  reverses^  with  respect  to  its  objects,  all  the  rules  of  morality.  It  is 
nothing  less  than  a  temporary  repeal  of  all  the  principles  of  virtue.  It  is  a 
system,  out  of  which  almost  all  the  virtues  are  excluded^  and  in  which  nearly 
all  the  vices  are  incorporated.  In  instructing  us  to  consider  a  portion  of  our 
fellow  creatures  as  the  proper  objects  of  enmity,  it  removes,  as  far  as  they  are 
concerned,  the  basis  of  all  society,  of  all  civilization  and  virtue ,-  for  the  basis 
of  these,  is  the  good  will  due  to  every  individual  of  the  species.''^ — "  Religion," 
then,  we  are  told,  "  sheds  its  selectest  influence  over  that  which  repeals 
all  the  principles  of  virtue" — over  that  "  in  which  nearly  all  the  vices  are 
incorporated  !"  What  "  religion"  it  is  which  does  this,  I  do  not  know,— but 
I  know  that  it  is  not  the  religion  of  Christ.  Truth  never  led  into  contradic- 
tions like  these.  Well  was  it  said  that  we  cannot  serve  two  masters.  The 
quotations  which  we  have  given,  are  evidence  sufficient  that  he  who  holds 
with  the  one  neglects  the  other. 

t  Decline  and  Fall. 


35 

an  oppressor  and  destroyer."*  This  is  the  ''vice," 
and  this  is  the  ''  misguidance,"  which  we  say,  that  a 
large  proportion  of  the  writers  of  every  civilized  coun- 
try are  continually  occasioning  and  promoting ;  and 
thus,  without,  perhaps,  any  purpose  of  mischief,  they 
contribute  more  to  the  destruction  of  mankind  than 
rapine  or  ambition.  A  writer  thinks,  perhaps,  that  it 
is  not  much  harm  to  applaud  bravery.  The  diver- 
gency from  virtae  may,  indeed,  be  small  in  its  begin- 
ning, but  the  effect  of  his  applauses  proceeds  in  the 
line  of  obliquity,  until  it  conducts,  at  last,  to  every 
excess  of  outrage,  to  every  variety  of  crime,  to  every 
mode  of  human  destruction. 

There  is  one  species  of  declamation  on  the  glories  of 
those  w4io  die  in  battle,  to  which  I  would  bes:  the 
notice  of  the  reader.  We  are  told  that  when  the  last 
breath  of  exultation  and  defiance  is  departed,  the  in- 
trepid spirit  rises  triur)iphantlij  from  the  field  of  glory  to 
its  kindred  heavens.  What  the  hero  has  been  on  earth, 
it  matters  not:  if  he  dies  by  a  musket  ball,  he  enters 
heaven  in  his  own  right.  All  men  like  to  suppose  that 
they  shall  attain  felicity  at  last ;  and  to  find  that  the}' 
can  attain  it  without  goodness  and  in  spite  of  vice,  is 
doubtless  peculiarly  solacing.  The  history  of  the 
hero's  achievements  wants,  indeed,  a  completeness 
without  it ;  and  this  gratuitous  transfer  of  his  soul  to 
heaven,  forms  an  agreeable  conclusion  to  his  story. 

I  would  be  far  from  "dealing  damnation  round  the 
land,"  and  undoubtingly  believe  that  of  those  who  fall 
in  battle,  many  have  found  an  everlasting  resting-place. 
But  an  indiscriminate  consignment  of  the  brave  to 
felicity,  is  certainly  unwarranted ;  and  if  wickedness 
consists  in  the  promotion  of  wickedness,  it  is  wicked 
too. 

*  Essay  on  the  Freedom  of  Wit  and  Humour. 


36 

If  we  say  in  positive  and  glowing  language,  of  men 
Indiscriminately,  and  therefore  of  the  bad,  that  they 
rise  on  the  wings  of  ecstacy  to  heaven,  we  do  all  that 
language  can  do  in  the  encouragement  of  profligacy. 
The  terrors  of  religion  may  still  be  dreaded ;  but  we 
have,  at  least  to  the  utmost  of  our  power,  diminished 
their  influence.  The  mind  willingly  accepts  the  assu- 
rance, or  acquiesces  in  the  falsehood  which  it  wishes 
to  be  true;  and  in  spite  of  all  their  better  knowledge, 
it  may  be  feared  that  some  continue  in  profligacy,  in 
the  doubting  hope  that  what  poets  and  historians  tell 
them  may  not  be  a  fiction. 

Perhaps  the  most  operative  encouragement  which 
these  declamations  give  to  the  soldier's  vices,  is  con- 
tained in  this  circumstance — that  they  manifest  that 
public  opinion  does  not  hold  them  in  abhorrence. 
Public  opinion  is  one  of  the  most  efficacious  regulators 
of  the  passions  of  mankind  ;  and  upon  the  soldier  this 
rein  is  peculiarly  influential.  His  profession  and  his 
personal  conduct  derive  almost  all  their  value  and 
their  reputation  from  the  opinion  of  the  world,  and 
from  that  alone.  If,  therefore,  the  public  voice  does 
not  censure  his  vices — if,  in  spite  of  his  vices,  it  awards 
him  everlasting  happiness,  what  restraint  remains 
upon  his  passions,  or  what  is  the  wonder  if  they  be  not 
restrained  ? 

The  peculiar  application  of  the  subject  to  our  pur- 
pose is,  however,  that  these  and  similar  representa- 
tions are  motives  to  the  profession  of  arms.  The  mili- 
tary life  is  made  a  privileged  profession,  in  which  a 
man  may  indulge  vices  with  impunity.  His  occupa- 
tion is  an  apology  for  his  crimes,  and  shields  them  from 
punishment  And  what  greater  motive  to  the  military 
life  can  be  given  ?  Or  what  can  be  more  atrocious 
than  the  crime  of  those  who  give  it?     I  know  not, 


37 

indeed,  whether  the  guilt  predominates,  or  the  folly. 
Pitiable  imbecility  surely  it  is,  that  can  persuade  itself 
to  sacrifice  all  the  beauties  of  virtue,  and  all  the  reali 
ties  and  terrors  of  religion,  to  the  love  of  the  flow- 
ing imagery  of  spirits  ascending  to  heaven.  Whether 
v^^riters  shall  do  this,  is  a  question,  not  of  choice,  but  of 
duty :  if  we  would  not  be  the  abettors  of  crime,  and  the 
sharers  of  its  guilt,  it  is  imperative  that  we  refrain. 

The  reader  will,  perhaps,  have  observed  that  some 
of  those  writers  who  are  liberal  contributors  to  the 
military  passion,  occasionally,  in  moments  when  truth 
and  nature  seem  to  have  burst  the  influence  of  habit, 
emphatically  condemn  the  system  which  they  have  so 
often  contributed  to  support.  There  are  not  many 
books  of  which  the  tendency  is  more  warlike,  or  which 
are  more  likely  to  stimulate  the  passion  for  martial 
glory,  than  the  Life  of  Nelson,  by  Southey  ;  a  work, 
in  the  composition  of  which,  it  probably  never  sug- 
gested itself  to  the  author  to  inquire  whether  he  were 
not  contributing  to  the  destruction  of  mankind.  A 
contributor,  however,  as  he  has  been,  w^e  find  in  an- 
other of  his  works,  this  extraordinary  and  memorable 
passage  : — ''There  is  but  one  community  of  Christians 
in  the  world,  and  that  unhappily,  of  all  communities 
one  of  the  smallest,  enlightened  enough  to  understand 
the  prohibition  of  war  by  our  Divine  Master,  in  its 
plain,  literal,  and  undeniable  sense  ;  and  conscientious 
enough  to  obey  it,  subduing  the  very  instinct  of  nature 
to  obedience."*  Of  these  voluntary  or  involuntary 
testimonies  of  the  mind  against  the  principles  which  it 
habitually  possesses,  and  habitually  inculcates,  many 
examples  might  be  given  ;t  and  they  are  valuable  tes- 
timonies, because  they  appear  to  be  elicited  by  the  in- 
fluence of  simple  nature  and  unclouded  truth.     This, 

♦  History  of  Brazil.  f  See  "  the  Inquiry,"  &c 


38 

I  think,  is  their  obvious  character.  They  will  com 
monly  be  found  to  have  been  v^ritten  when  the  mind 
has  become  sobered  by  reason,  or  tranquillized  by  reli- 
gion; when  the  feelings  are  not  excited  by  external 
stimulants,  and  when  conquest,  and  honour,  and  glory 
are  reduced  to  that  station  of  importance  to  which  truth 
assigns  them. 

But  whether  such  testimonies  have  much  tendency 
to  give  conviction  to  a  reader,  I  know  not.  Sur- 
rounded as  they  are  with  a  general  contrariety  of  sen- 
timent, it  is  possible  that  those  who  read  them  may 
pass  them  by  as  the  speculations  of  impracticable 
morality.  I  cannot,  however,  avoid  recommending 
the  reader,  whenever  he  meets  with  passages  like 
these,  seriously  to  examine  into  their  meaning  and 
their  force  :  to  inquire  whether  they  be  not  accordant 
with  the  purity  of  truth,  and  whether  they  do  not 
possess  the  greater  authority,  because  they  have  forced 
themselves  from  the  mind  when  least  likely  to  be 
deceived,  and  in  opposition  to  all  its  habits  and  all  its 
associations. 

Such,  then,  are  amongst  the  principal  of  the  causes 
of  war.  Some  consist  in  want  of  thought,  and  some 
in  delusion;  some  are  mercenary,  and  some  simply 
criminal.  Whether  any  or  all  of  them  form  a  motive 
to  the  desolation  of  empires  and  to  human  destruction, 
such  as  a  good  or  a  reasoning  man,  who  abstracts  him- 
self from  habitual  feelings,  can  contemplate  with  ap- 
probation, is  a  question  which  every  one  should  ask 
and  determine  for  himself.  A  conflict  of  nations  is  a 
serious  thing :  no  motive  arising  from  our  passions 
should  occasion  it,  or  have  any  influence  in  occasioning 
it :  supposing  the  question  of  lawfulness  to  be  super- 
seded, war  should  be  imposed  only  by  stern,  inevitable, 
unyielding  necessity.     That  such  a  necessity  is  con- 


39 

tained  in  these  motives,  I  think  cannot  be  shown.  We 
may,  therefore,  reasonably  question  the  defensibility 
of  the  custom,  which  is  continued  by  such  causes,  and 
supported  with  such  motives.  If  a  tree  is  known  by 
its  fruits,  we  may  also  judge  the  fruit  by  the  tree  : 
''  Men  do  not  gather  grapes  of  thorns."  If  the  motives 
to  war  and  its  causes  are  impure,  war  itself  cannot  be 
virtuous ;  and  I  would,  therefore,  solemnly  invite  the 
reader  to  give,  to  the  succeeding  Inquiry,  his  sober  and 
Christian  attention. 


n. 

AN  INQUIRY, 


When  I  endeavour  to  divest  myself  of  the  influence 
of  habit,  and  to  contemplate  a  battle  with  those  emo- 
tions which  it  would  excite  in  the  mind  of  a  being  who 
had  never  before  heard  of  human  slaughter,  I  find  that 
I  am  impressed  only  with  horror  and  astonishment: 
and  perhaps,  of  the  two  emotions,  astonishment  is  the 
greater. 

That  several  thousand  persons  should  meet  together, 
and  then  deliberately  begin  to  kill  one  another,  appears 
to  the  understanding  a  proceeding  so  preposterous,  so 
monstrous,  that  I  think  a  being  such  as  I  have  sup- 
posed, would  inevitably  conclude  that  they  were  mad. 
Nor,  if  it  were  attempted  to  explain  to  him  some 
motives  to  such  conduct,  do  I  believe  that  he  would  be 
able  to  comprehend  how  any  possible  circumstances 
could  make  it  reasonable.  The  ferocity  and  prodi- 
gious folly  of  the  act  would  out-balance  the  weight  of 
every  conceivable  motive,  and  he  would  turn,  unsatis- 
fied, away, 

"  Astonished  at  the  madness  of  mankind." 

There  is  an  advantage  in  making  suppositions  such 
as  these ;  because,  when  the  mind  has  been  familiar- 

40 


41 

ized  to  a  practice  however  monstrous  or  inlinman,  it 
loses  some  of  its  sagacity  of  moral  perception — pro- 
fligacy becomes  honour,  and  inhumanity  becomes 
spirit.  But  if  the  subject  is  by  some  circumstance 
presented  to  the  mind  unconnected  with  any  of  its 
previous  associations,  we  see  it  with  a  new  judgment 
and  new  feelings;  and  wonder,  perhaps,  that  we  have 
not  felt  so  or  thought  so  before.  And  such  occasions  it 
is  the  part  of  a  wise  man  to  seek  ;  since  if  they  never 
happen  to  us,  it  will  often  be  difficult  for  us  accurately 
to  estimate  the  qualities  of  human  actions,  or  to  deter- 
mine whether  we  approve  them  from  a  decision  of  our 
judgment,  or  whether  we  yield  to  them  only  the  acqui- 
escence of  habit. 

It  is  worthy  at  least  of  notice  and  remembrance, 
that  the  only  being  in  the  creation  of  Providence 
which  enj^ao-es  in  the  wholesale  destruction  of  his  own 
species,  is  man  ;  that  being  who  alone  possesses  reason 
to  direct  his  conduct,  who  alone  is  required  to  love  his 
fellows,  and  who  alone  hopes  in  futurity  for  repose 
and  peace.  All  this  seems  wonderful,  and  may  reason- 
ably humiliate  us.  The  powers  which  elevate  us 
above  the  rest  of  the  creation,  we  have  employed  in 
attaining  to  pre-eminence  of  outrage  and  mahgnity. 

It  may  properly  be  a  subject  of  wonder,  that  the 
arguments  which  are  brought  to  justify  a  custom  such 
as  war  receive  so  little  investigation.  It  must  be  a 
studious  ingenuity  of  mischief,  which  could  devise  a 
practice  more  calamitous  or  horrible  ?  and  yet  it  is  a 
practice  of  which  it  rarely  occurs  to  us  to  inquire  into 
the  necessity,  or  to  ask  whether  it  cannot  be  or  ought 
not  to  be  avoided.  In  one  truth,  however,  all  w^ill  ac- 
quiesce,— that  the  arguments  in  favour  of  such  a  prac- 
tice should  be  unanswerably  strong. 

Let  it  not  be  said  that  the  experience  and  the  prac- 

F 


42 

tice  of  other  ages  have  superseded  the  necessity  of 
inquiry  in  our  own ;  that  there  can  be  no  reason  to 
question  the  lawfulness  of  that  which  has  been  sanc- 
tioned by  forty  centuries ;  or  that  he  who  presumes  to 
question  it  is  amusing  himself  with  schemes  of  vision- 
ary philanthropy.  *'  There  is  not,  it  may  be,"  says 
Lord  Clarendon,  "  a  greater  obstruction  to  the  investi- 
gation of  truth,  or  the  improvernent  of  knowledge,  than 
the  too  frequent  appeal,  and  the  too  supine  resignation 
of  our  understanding  to  antiquity."*  Whosoever  pro- 
poses an  alteration  of  existing  institutions  will  meet, 
from  some  men,  with  a  sort  of  instinctive  opposition, 
which  appears  to  be  influenced  by  no  process  of  rea- 
soning, by  no  considerations  of  propriety  or  principles 
of  rectitude,  which  defends  the  existing  system  because 
it  exists,  and  which  would  have  equally  defended  its 
opposite  if  that  had  been  the  oldest.  "  Nor  is  it  out 
of  modesty  that  we  have  this  resignation,  or  that  we 
do,  in  truth,  think  those  who  have  gone  before  us  to 
be  wiser  than  ourselves ;  we  are  as  proud  and  as  peev- 
ish as  any  of  our  progenitors  ;  but  it  is  out  of  laziness  ; 
we  will  rather  take  their  words  than  take  the  pains 
to  examine  the  reason  they  governed  themselves  by."t 
To  those  who  urge  objections  from  the  authority  of 
ages,  it  is,  indeed,  a  sufficient  answer  to  say  that  they 
apply  to  every  long  continued  custom.  Slave-dealers 
urged  them  against  the  friends  of  the  abolition;  Papists 
urged  them  against  Wicklifle  and  Luther  ;  and  the 
Athenians  probably  thought  it  a  good  objection  to  an 
apostle,  that  "  he  seemed  to  be  a  setter  forth  of  strange 
gods." 

It  is  agreed  by  all  sober  moralists,  that  the  founda- 
tion of  our  duty  is  the  will  of  God,  and  that  his  will  is 
to  be  ascertained  by  the  Revelation  which  he  has  made. 

*  Lord  Clarendon's  Essays.  t  Ibid. 


43 

To  Christianity,  therefore,  we  refer  in  determination 
of  this  great  question  :  we  admit  no  other  test  of  truth : 
and  with  him  who  thinks  that  the  decisions  of  Chris- 
tianity may  be  superseded  by  other  considerations,  we 
have  no  concern  ;  we  address  not  our  argument  to  him, 
but  lea.ve  him  to  find  some  other  and  better  standard, 
by  which  to  adjust  his  principles  and  regulate  his  con- 
duct. These  observations  apply  to  those  objectors 
who  loosely  say  that  '*  wars  are  necessary ;"  for  sup- 
posing the  Christian  religion  to  prohibit  war,  it  is  pre- 
posterous, and  irreverent  also,  to  justify  ourselves  in 
supporting  it,  because  ''  it  is  necessary  "  To  talk  of  a 
divine  law  which  must  he  disoheijed^  implies,  indeed, 
such  a  confusion  of  moral  principles  as  well  as  laxity 
of  them,  that  neither  the  philosopher  nor  the  Christian 
are  required  to  notice  it.  But,  perhaps,  some  of  those 
who  say  that  wars  are  necessary,  do  not  very  accu- 
rately inquire  what  they  mean.  There  are  two  sorts 
of  necessity — moral  and  physical ;  and  these,  it  is  pro- 
bable, some  men  are  accustomed  to  confound.  That 
there  is  any  physical  necessity  for  war — that  people 
cannot,  if  they  choose,  refuse  to  engage  in  it,  no  one 
will  maintain.  And  a  moral  necessity  to  perform  an 
action,  consists  only  in  the  prospect  of  a  certain  degret 
of  evil  by  refraining  from  it.  If,  then,  those  who  say 
that  "  wars  are  necessary,"  mean  that  they  are  physi- 
cally necessary,  we  deny  it.  If  they  mean  that  wars 
avert  greater  evils  than  they  occasion,  we  ask  for  proot. 
Proof  has  never  yet  been  given  :  and  even  if  we 
thought  that  we  possessed  such  proof,  we  should  still 
be  referred  to  the  primary  question— "  What  is  the  will 
of  God?" 

It  is  some  satisfaction  to  be  able  to  give,  on  a  ques- 
tion of  this  nature,  the  testimony  of  some  great  minds 
against  the  lawfulness  of  war,  opposed  as  those  testi- 

D2 


44 

monies  are  to  the  general  prejudice  and  the  general 
practice  of  the  world.  It  has  been  observed  by  Bec- 
caria,  that  "  it  is  the  fate  of  great  truths,  to  glow  only 
like  a  flash  of  lightning  amidst  the  dark  clouds  in  which 
error  has  enveloped  the  universe ;  and  if  our  testimo- 
nies are  few  or  transient,  it  matters  not,  so  that  their 
light  be  the  light  of  truth."  There  are,  indeed,  many, 
who  in  describing  tiie  horrible  particulars  of  a  siege  or 
a  battle,  indulge  in  some  declamiations  on  the  horrors  of 
war,  such  as  has  been  often  repeated  and  often  ap- 
plauded, and  as  often  forgotten.  But  such  declama- 
tions are  of  little  value  and  of  little  effect :  he  who  reads 
the  next  paragraph  finds,  probably,  that  he  is  invited  to 
follow  the  path  to  glory  and  to  victory — to  share  the 
herd's  danger  and  partalce  the  hero's  praise  ;  and  he 
soon  discovers  that  the  moralizing  parts  of  his  author 
are  the  impulse  of  feelings  rather  than  of  principles, 
and  thinks  that  though  it  may  be  very  well  to  write, 
yet  it  is  better  to  forget  them. 

There  are,  however,  testimonies,  delivered  in  the 
calm  of  reflection,  by  acute  and  enlightened  men, 
which  may  reasonably  be  allowed  at  least  so  much 
weight  as  to  free  the  present  inquiry  from  the  charge 
of  being  wild  or  visionary.  Christianity  indeed  needs 
no  such  auxiliaries;  but  if  they  induce  an  examination 
of  her  duties,  a  wise  man  will  not  wish  them  to  be  dis- 
regarded. 

''  They  who  defend  war,"  says  Erasmus,  *'  must 
defend  the  dispositions  which  lead  to  war  ;  and  these 
dispositions  are  absolutely  forbidden  by  the  gospel — 
Since  the  time  that  Jesus  Christ  said,  put  up  thy  sword 
into  its  scabbard,  Christians  ought  not  to  go  to  rvar. 
— Christ  sufl'ered  Peter  to  fall  into  an  error  in  this 
matter,  on  purpose  that,  when  he  had  put  up  Peter's 
sword,  it  might  remain  no  longer  a  doubt  that  war  rvas 


45 

prohibited,  which,  before  that  order,  had  been  consi- 
dered as  allowable." — "I  am  persuaded,"  says  the 
Bishop  of  Llandaff,  "  that  when  the  spirit  of  Christi 
a?iitt/  shall  exert  its  proper  influence  over  the  minds  ot 
individuals,  and  especially  over  the  minds  of  public 
men  in  their  public  capacities,  over  the  minds  of  men 
constituting  the  councils  of  princes,  from  whence  are 
the  issues  of  peace  and  war — when  this  happy  period 
shall  arrive,  7var  will  cease  throughout  the  whole  Chris- 
tian world''^-  *'  War,"  says  the  same  acute  prelate, 
"  has  practices  and  principles  peculiar  to  itself,  7vhich 
hut  ill  quadrate  with  the  ride  of  moral  rectitude,  and  ore 
quite  abhorrent  from  the  benignity  of  Christianitij P  \ 
The  emphatical  declaration  which  I  have  already 
quoted  for  another  purpose,  is  yet  more  distinct.  The 
prohibition  of  war  by  our  Divifie  Master,  is  plain,  literal, 
and  undeniable.X  Dr-  Vicesimus  Knox  speaks  in  lan- 
guage equally  specific  : — "  Morality  and  religion  forbid 
war  in  its  motives,  conduct,  and  consequences T^ 

In  an  inquiry  into  the  decisions  of  Christianity  upon 
the  question  of  war,  we  have  to  refer — to  the  general 
tendency  of  the  revelation ;  to  the  individual  declara- 
tions of  Jesus  Christ ;  to  his  practice  ;  to  the  senti- 
ments and  practices  of  his  commissioned  followers ;  to 
the  opinions  respecting  its  lawfulness  which  w^ere  held 
by  their  immediate  converts ;  and  to  some  other  spe- 
cies of  Christian  evidence. 

It  is,  perhaps,  the  capital  error  of  those  who  have 
attempted  to  instruct  others  in  the  duties  of  morality, 
that  they  have  not  been  willing  to  enforce  the  rules  of 
the  Christian  Scriptures  in  their  full  extent.  Almost 
every  moralist  pauses  somewhere  short  of  the  point 
which  they  prescribe  ;  and  this  pause  is  made  at  a 
greater  or  less  distance  from  the  Christian  standard,  in 

*  Life  of  Bp.  Watson,     j  Ibid.     :j:  Southey's  Hist  of  Brazil.      §  Essays. 


46 

proportion  to  the  admission,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree, 
of  principles  which  they  have  superadded  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  gospel.  Few,  however,  supersede  the 
laws  of  Christianity,  without  proposing  some  principle 
of  ''expediency,"  some  doctrine  of  "natural  law," 
some  theory  of  *'  intrinsic  decency  and  turpitude," 
which  they  lay  down  as  the  true  standard  of  moral 
judgment. — They  who  reject  truth  are  not  likely  to 
escape  error.  Having  mingled  with  Christianity  prin- 
ciples which  it  never  taught,  we  are  not  likely  to  be 
consistent  with  truth,  or  with  ourselves ;  and  accord- 
ingly, he  who  seeks  for  direction  from  the  professed 
teachers  of  morality  finds  his  mind  bewildered  in  con- 
flicting theories,  and  his  judgment  embarrassed  by  con- 
tradictory instructions.  But  "  wisdom  is  justified  by 
all  her  children ;"  and  she  is  justified,  perhaps,  by  no- 
thing more  evidently  than  by  the  laws  which  she  has 
imposed  ;  for  all  who  have  proposed  any  standard  of 
rectitude,  other  than  that  which  Christianity  has  laid 
down,  or  who  have  admixed  any  foreign  principles 
with  the  principles  which  she  teaches,  have  hitherto 
proved  that  they  have  only  been  ''  sporting  themselves 
with  their  own  deceivings."* 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the  laws  of  the  Mosaic 
dispensation,  which  confessedly  w^as  an  imperfect 
system,  are  laid  down  clearly  and  specifically  in  the 
form  of  an  express  code;  whilst  those  of  that  purer 
reliction  which  Jesus  Christ  introduced  into  the  world, 
are  onl}^  to  be  found,  casually  and  incidentally  scat- 
tered, as  it  w^ere,  through  a  volume — intermixed  with 

*  "  Even  thinking  men,  bewildered  by  the  various  and  contradictory- 
systems  of  moral  judgment  adopted  by  different  ages  and  nations,  have 
doubted  the  existence  of  any  real  and  permanent  standard,  and  have  consi  • 
dered  it  as  the  mere  creature  of  habit  and  education."! — How  has  the  decla- 
ration been  verified — "  I  will  destroy  the  wisdom  of  the  wise  !" 
t  Murray's  Inquiries  respecting  the  Progress  of  Society. 


47 

other  subjects — elicited  by  unconnected  events — de- 
livered at  distant  periods,  and  for  distant  purposes,  in 
narratives,  in  discourses,  in  conversations,  in  letters. 
Into  the  final  purpose  of  such  an  ordination  (for  an 
ordination  it  must  be  supposed  to  be),  it  is  not  our 
present  business  to  inquire.  One  important  truth, 
however,  results  from  the  fact  as  it  exists  : — that  those 
who  would  form  a  general  estimate  of  the  moral  obli- 
gations of  Christianity,  must  derive  it,  not  from  codes, 
but  imva  principles  ;  not  from  a  multiplicity  of  directions 
in  w^hat  manner  we  are  to  act,  but  from  instructions 
respecting  the  motives  and  dispositions  by  which  all 
actions  are  to  be  regulated.^ 

It  appears,  therefore,  to  follow,  that  in  the  inquiry 
whether  w^ar  is  sanctioned  by  Christianity,  a  specific 
declaration  of  its  decision  is  not  likely  to  be  found.  If, 
then,  we  be  asked  for  a  prohibition  of  war  by  Jesus 
Christ,  in  the  express  terms  of  a  command,  in  the  man- 
ner in  which  Thou  shalt  not  Jcill  is  directed  to  murder, 
we  willingly  answer  that  no  such  prohibition  exists  : — 
and  it  is  not  necessary  to  the  argument.  Even  those 
who  would  require  such  a  prohibition,  are  themselves 
satisfied  respecting  the  obligation  of  many  negative 
duties,  on  which  there  has  been  no  specific  decision  in 
the  New  Testament.  They  beheve  that  suicide  is  not 
law^ful.  Yet  Christianity  never  forbade  it.  It  can  be 
shown,  indeed,  by  implication  and  inference,  that  sui- 
cide could  not  have  been  allowed,  and  with  this  they 
are  satisfied.  Yet  there  is,  probably,  in  the  Christian 
Scriptures  not  a  twentieth  part  of  as  much  indirect 
evidence  agrainst  the  lawfulness  of  suicide,  as  there  is 
against  the  lawfulness  of  war.  To  those  who  require 
such  a  command  as  Thou  shalt  not  engage  in  war,  it  is 

*  I  refer,  of  course,  to  those  questions  of  morality  which  are  not  specifi- 
cally decided. 


48 

therefore,  sufficient  to  reply,  that  they  require  that 
which,  upon  this  and  upon  many  other  subjects,  Chris- 
tianity has  not  chosen  to  give. 

We  refer  then,  first,  to  the  general  nature  of  Chris- 
tianity, because  we  think  that,  if  there  were  no  other 
evidence  against  the  lawfulness  of  war,  we  should  pos- 
sess, in  that  general  nature,  sufficient  proof  that  it  is 
virtually  forbidden. 

That  the  whole  character  and  spirit  of  our  religion 
are  eminently  and  peculiarly  peaceful,  and  that  it  is 
opposed,  in  all  its  principles,  to  carnage  and  devasta- 
tion, cannot  be  disputed. 

Have  peace  one  with  another.  By  this  shall  all  men 
hnow  that  ye  are  my  disciples,  if  ye  have  love  one  to  an- 
other. 

Walk  rvith  all  hjdiness  and  meekness,  rvith  long-suf- 
fering, forbearing  one  another  in  love. 

Be  ye  all  of  one  mind,  having  compassion  one  of  an- 
other ;  love  as  brethren,  be  pitiful,  be  courteous,  not  ren- 
dering evil  for  evil,  or  railing  for  railing. 

Be  at  peace  among  yourselves.  See  that  none  render 
evil  for  evil  to  any  man. — God  hath  culLd  us  to  peace. 

Follow  after  love,  patience,  meekness. — Be  gentle, 
showing  all  meekness  unto  all  men. — Live  in  peace. 

Lay  aside  all  malice. — Put  off  anger,  wrath,  malice. — 
Let  all  bitteryiess,  and  wrath,  and  anger,  and  clamour, 
and  evil  speaking  be  put  away  from  you,  with  all  malice. 

Avenge  not  yourselves. — If  thine  enemy  hunger,  feed 
him  ;  if  he  thirst,  give  him  drink. — Recompense  to  no 
man  evil  for  evil. — Overcome  evil  with  good. 

Now  we  ask  of  any  man  who  looks  over  these  pas- 
sages, what  evidence  do  they  convey  respecting  the 
lawfulness  of  war  ?  Could  any  approval  or  allowance 
of  it  have  been  subjoined  to  these  instructions,  without 
obvious  and  most  gross  inconsistency  ?     But  if  war  is 


49 

obviously  and  most  grossly  inconsistent  with  the  gene- 
ral character  of  Christianity — if  war  could  not  have  been 
permitted  by  its  teachers,  without  any  egregious  viola- 
tion of  their  own  precepts,  we  think  that  the  evidence 
of  its  unlawfulness,  arising  from  this  general  character 
ahne,  is  as  clear,  as  absolute,  and  as  exclusive  as 
could  have  been  contained  in  any  form  of  prohibition 
whatever. 

To  those  solemn,  discriminative,  and  public  declara- 
tions of  Jesus  Christ,  which  are  contained  in  the  "  ser- 
mon on  the  mount,"  a  reference  will  necessarily  be 
made  upon  this  great  question ;  and,  perhaps,  more  is 
to  be  learnt  from  these  declarations,  of  the  moral  duties 
of  his  religion,  than  from  any  other  part  of  his  commu- 
nications to  the  world.  It  should  be  remarked,  in  rela- 
tion to  the  injunctions  which  follow,  that  he  repeatedly 
refers  to  that  less  pure  and  less  peaceable  system  of 
morality  which  the  law  of  Moses  had  inculcated,  and 
contradistinguishes  it  from  his  own. 

*' Ye  have  heard  that  it  hath  been  said.  An  eye  for 
an  eye,  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,  but  I  say  unto  you  that 
ye  resist  not  evil ;  but  whosoever  shall  smite  thee  on 
thy  right  cheek,  turn  to  him  the  other  also." — "Ye 
have  heard  that  it  hath  been  said.  Thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbour,  and  hate  thine  enemy;  but  I  say  unto  you. 
Love  your  enemies ;  bless  them  that  curse  you ;  do 
good  to  them  that  hate  you ;  and  pray  for  them  which 
despitefully  use  you  and  persecute  you  :  for  if  ye  love 
them  only  which  love  you,  what  reward  have  ye?"* 

There  is  an  extraordinary  emphasis  in  the  form  of 
these  prohibitions  and  injunctions.  They  are  not 
given  in  an  insulated  manner.  They  inculcate  the 
obligations  of  Christianity  as  peculiar  to  itself.     The 

*  Matt,  v.,  &c. 
G 


50 

previous  system  of  retaliation  is  introduced  for  the 
purpose  of  prohibiting  it,  and  of  distinguishing  more 
clearly  and  forcibly  the  pacific  nature  of  the  new 
dispensation. 

Of  the  precepts  from  the  mount  the  most  obvious 
characteristic  is  greater  moral  excellence  and  superior 
purity.  They  are  directed,  not  so  immediately  to  the 
external  regulation  of  the  conduct,  as  to  the  restraint 
and  purification  of  the  affections.  In  another  precepts- 
it  is  not  enough  that  an  unlawful  passion  be  just  so  far 
restrained  as  to  produce  no  open  immorality — the 
passion  itself  is  forbidden.  The  tendency  of  the  dis- 
course is  to  attach  guilt,  not  to  action  only,  but  also  to 
thought.  "It  has  been  said,  Thou  shalt  not  kill,  and 
whosoever  shall  kill,  shall  be  in  danger  of  the  judgment; 
but  I  say,  that  whosoever  is  angry  with  his  brother 
without  a  cause,  shall  be  in  danger  of  the  judgment."! 
Our  lawgiver  attaches  guilt  to  some  of  the  violent 
feelings,  such  as  resentment,  hatred,  revenge ;  and  by 
doing  this,  we  contend  that  he  attaches  guilt  to  war. 
War  cannot  be  carried  on  without  these  passions  which 
he  prohibits.  Our  argument,  therefore,  is  syllogistical. 
War  cannot  be  allowed,  if  that  which  is  necessary  to 
war  is  prohibited. 

It  was  sufficient  for  the  law  of  Moses,  that  men  main- 
tained love  towards  their  neighbours ;  towards  an 
enemy  they  were  at  liberty  to  indulge  rancour  and  re- 
sentment. But  Christianity  says,  "  If  ye  love  them 
only  which  love  you,  what  reward  have  ye  ? — Love 
yoar  enemies."  Now  what  sort  of  love  does  that  man 
bear  towards  his  enemy,  who  runs  him  through  with  a 
bayonet?  We  contend  that  the  distinguishing  duties 
of  Christianity  must  be  sacrificed  when  war  is  carried 

*  Matt.  V.  28.  t  Matt.  v.  22. 


51 

on.  The  question  is  between  the  abandonment  of  these 
duties  and  the  abandonment  of  war,  for  both  cannot  be 
retained.* 

It  is,  however,  objected  that  the  prohibitions,  "  Resist 
not  evil,"  &c.,  are  figurative ;  and  that  they  do  not 
mean  that  no  injury  is  to  be  punished,  and  no  outrage 
to  be  repelled.  It  has  been  asked,  v^ith  complacent 
exultation,  what  would  these  advocates  of  peace  say  to 
him  who  struck  them  on  the  right  cheek?  Would  they 
turn  to  him  the  other  ?  What  would  these  patient 
moralists  say  to  him  who  robbed  them  of  a  coat? 
Would  they  give  him  a  cloak  also?  What  would  these 
philanthropists  say  to  him  who  asked  them  to  lend  a 
hundred  pounds?  Would  they  not  turn  away  ?  This 
is  argumentum  ad  liominem;  one  example  amongst 
the  many,  of  that  lowest  and  most  dishonest  of  all  modes 
of  intellectual  warfare,  which  consists  in  exciting  the 
feelinors  instead  of  convincinof  the  understandinof.  It 
is,  however,  some  satisfaction,  that  the  motive  to  the 
adoption  of  this  mode  of  warfare  is  itself  an  evidence 
of  a  bad  cause,  for  what  honest  reasoner  would  produce 
only  a  laugh,  if  he  were  able  to  produce  conviction? 
But  I  must  ask,  in  my  turn,  what  do  these  objectors 
say  is  the  meaning  of  the  precepts  ?  What  is  the 
meaning  of  "  resist  not  evil?"  Does  it  mean  to  allow 
bombardment,  devastation,  murder?  If  it  does  not 
mean  to  allow  all  this,  it  does  not  mean  to  allow  war. 
What  again  do  the  objectors  say  is  the  meaning  of 
"  love  your  enemies,"  or  of  "•  do  good  to  them  that  hate 
you?"     Does  it  mean  "ruin  their  commerce" — "sink 


*  Yet  the  retention  of  both  has  been,  unhappily  enough,  attempted.  In  a 
late  publication,  of  which  part  is  devoted  to  the  defence  of  war,  the  author 
gravely  recommends  soldiers,  whilst  shooting  and  stabbing  their  enemies,  to 
maintain  towards  them  a  feeling  of  "  good  will." — Tracts  and  Essays,  by  the 
late  William  Hey,  Esq.,  F.R.S. 
E 


52 

their  fleets" — "plunder  their  cities" — "shoot  through 
their  hearts  ?"  If  the  precept  does  not  mean  all  this,  it 
does  not  mean  war.  We  are,  then,  not  required  to 
define  what  exceptions  Christianity  may  admit  to  the 
application  of  some  of  the  precepts  from  the  mount ; 
since,  whatever  exceptions  she  may  allow,  it  is  mani- 
fest what  she  does  not  allow  :  for  if  we  give  to  our  ob- 
jectors whatever  license  of  interpretation  they  may 
desire,  they  cannot,  either  by  honesty  or  dishonesty, 
so  interpret  the  precepts  as  to  make  them  allow  ivar. 
I  would,  however,  be  far  from  insinuating  that  we  are 
left  without  any  means  of  determining  the  degree  and 
kind  of  resistance,  which,  in  some  cases,  is  lawful; 
although  I  believe  no  specification  of  it  can  be  previ- 
ously laid  down:  for  if  the  precepts  of  Christianity  had 
been  multiplied  a  thousand-fold,  there  would  still  have 
arisen  many  cases  of  daily  occurrence,  to  which  none 
of  them  would  precisely  have  applied.  Our  business, 
then,  so  far  as  rvritten  rules  are  concerned,  is  in  all 
cases  to  which  these  rules  do  not  apply,  to  regulate 
our  conduct  by  those  general  principles  and  disposi- 
tions which  our  religion  enjoins.  I  say,  so  far  as 
rvritten  rules  are  concerned;  for  "if  any  man  lack  wis- 
dom," and  these  rules  do  not  impart  it,  "  let  him  ask 
of  God."* 

Of  the  injunctions  that  are  contrasted  with  "eye  for 
eye,  and  tooth  for  tooth,"  the  entire  scope  and  purpose 
is  the  suppression  of  the  violent  passions,  and  the  in- 
culcation of  forbearance,  and  forgiveness,  and  benevo- 

*  It  is  manifest,  from  the  New  Testament,  that  we  are  not  required  to 
give  "  a  cloak,"  in  every  case,  to  him  who  robs  us  of  "  a  coat ;"  but  I 
think  it  is  equally  manifest  that  we  are  required  to  give  it  not  the  less  be- 
cause he  has  robbed  us.  The  circumstance  of  his  having  robbed  us  does 
not  entail  an  obligation  to  give  ;  but  it  also  does  not  impart  a  permission  to 
withhold.  If  the  necessities  of  the  plunderer  require  relief,  it  is  the  business 
of  the  plundered  to  relieve  them. 


6a 

ience,  and  love.  They  forbid,  not  specifically  the  act, 
but  the  spirit  of  war ;  and  this  method  of  prohibition 
Christ  ordinarily  employed.  He  did  not  often  condemn 
the  individual  doctrines  or  customs  of  the  age,  how- 
ever false  or  however  vicious ;  but  he  condemned  the 
passions  by  which  only  vice  could  exist,  and  inculcated 
the  truth  which  dismissed  every  error.  And  this 
method  was  undoubtedly  wise.  In  the  gradual  altera- 
tions of  human  wickedness,  many  new  species  of  pro- 
fligacy might  arise  which  the  world  had  not  yet  prac- 
tised. In  the  gradual  vicissitudes  of  human  error, 
many  new  fallacies  might  obtain  which  the  world  hath 
not  yet  held  ;  and  how  were  these  errors  and  these 
crimes  to  be  opposed,  but  by  the  inculcation  of  princi- 
ples that  were  applicable  to  every  crime  and  to  every 
error? — principles  which  tell  us  not  always  what  is 
wrong,  but  which  tell  us  what  always  is  right. 

There  are  two  modes  of  censure  or  condemnation ; 
the  one  is  to  reprobate  evil,  and  the  other  to  enforce 
the  opposite  good ;  and  both  these  modes  were  adopted 
by  Christ  in  relation  to  war.  He  not  only  censured 
the  passions  that  are  necessary  to  war,  but  inculcated 
the  affections  which  are  most  opposed  to  them.  The 
conduct  and  dispositions  upon  which  he  pronounced 
his  solemn  benediction,  are  exceedingly  remarkable. 
They  are  these,  and  in  this  order :  poverty  of  spirit — 
mourning — meekness — desire  of  righteousness — mercy 
— purity  of  heart — peace-making — sufferance  of  per- 
secution. Now  let  the  reader  try  whether  he  can  pro- 
pose eight  other  qualities,  to  be  retained  as  the  general 
habit  of  the  mind,  which  shall  be  more  incongruous 
with  war. 

Of  these  benedictions  I  think  the  most  emphatical  is 
that  pronounced  upon  the  peace-7nakers  :  "  Blessed  are 
the  peace-makers,  for  they  shall  be  called  the  children 


54 

of  God."^  Higher  praise  or  a  higher  title,  no  man  can 
receive.  Now  I  do  not  say  that  these  benedictions 
contain  an  absolute  proof  that  Christ  prohibited  war, 
but  I  say  they  make  it  clear  that  he  did  not  approve  it. 
He  selected  a  number  of  subjects  for  his  solemn  appro- 
bation ;  and  not  one  of  them  possesses  any  congruity 
with  war,  and  some  of  them  cannot  possibly  exist  in 
conjunction  with  it.  Can  any  one  believe  that  he  w^io 
made  this  selection,  and  who  distinguished  the  peace- 
makers with  peculiar  approbation,  could  have  sanc- 
tioned his  followers  in  murdering  one  another  ?  Or 
does  any  one  believe  that  those  who  were  mourners, 
and  meek,  and  merciful,  and  peace-making,  could  at 
the  same  time  perpetrate  such  murder?  If  I  be  told 
that  a  temporary  suspension  of  Christian  dispositions, 
although  necessary  to  the  prosecution  of  war,  does  not 
imply  the  extinction  of  Christian  principles,  or  that 
these  dispositions  may  be  the  general  habit  of  the  mind, 
and  may  both  precede  and  follow  the  acts  of  war ;  I 
answer  that  this  is  to  grant  all  that  I  require,  since  it 
grants  that  when  we  engage  in  war,  we  abandon 
Christianity. 

When  the  betrayers  and  murderers  of  Jesus  Christ 
approached  him,  his  followers  asked,  ''  Shall  we  smite 
with  the  sword?"  And  without  waiting  for  an  answer, 
one  of  them  drew  "  his  sword,  and  smote  the  servant 
of  the  high-priest,  and  cut  off  his  right  ear." — ''  Put 
up  thy  sword  again  into  its  place,"  said  his  Divine 
Master,  ''  for  all  they  that  take  the  sword  shall  perish 
with  the  sword. "t  There  is  the  greater  importance 
in  the  circumstances  of  this  command,  because  it  pro- 
hibited the  destruction  of  human  life  in  a  cause  in 
which  there  were  the  best  of  possible  reasons  for  de- 
stroying it.     The  question,  ''  shall  we  smite  with  the 

*  Matt.  V.  9  I  Matt.  xxvi.  51,  52 


55 

sword,"  obviously  refers  to  the  defence  of  the  Re- 
deemer from  his  assailants  by  force  of  arms.  His  fol- 
lowers were  ready  to  fight  for  him  ;  and  if  any  reason 
for  fighting  could  be  a  good  one,  they  certainly  had  it. 
But  if,  in  defence  of  himself  from  the  hands  of  bloody 
ruffians,  his  religion  did  not  allow  the  sword  to  be 
drawn,  for  what  reason  can  it  be  lawful  to  draw  it? 
The  advocates  of  war  are  at  least  bound  to  show  a  bet- 
ter reason  for  destroying  mankind,  than  is  contained  in 
this  instance  in  which  it  was  forbidden. 

It  will,  perhaps,  be  said,  that  the  reason  why  Christ 
did  not  suffer  himself  to  be  defended  by  arms  was,  that 
such  a  defence  would  have  defeated  the  purpose  for 
which  he  came  into  the  world,  namely,  to  offer  up  his 
life ;  and  that  he  himself  assigns  this  reason  in  the  con- 
text. He  does  indeed  assign  it ;  but  the  primary  rea- 
son, the  immediate  context,  is — ''  for  all  they  that  take 
the  sword  shall  perish  with  the  sword."  The  re- 
ference to  the  destined  sacrifice  of  his  life  is  an  after- 
reference.  This  destined  sacrifice  might,  perhaps, 
have  formed  a  reason  why  his  followers  should  not 
fight  then^  but  the  first,  the  principal  reason  which  he 
assigned,  was  a  reason  why  they  should  not  fight  at  all. 
Nor  is  it  necessary  to  define  the  precise  import  of  the 
words  "  for  all  they  that  take  the  sword  shall  perish 
with  the  sword  :"  since  it  is  sufficient  for  us  all,  that 
they  imply  reprobation. 

To  the  declaration  which  was  made  by  Jesus  Christ, 
in  the  conversation  that  took  place  between  himself 
and  Pilate,  after  he  had  been  seized  by  the  Jews,  I 
would  peculiarly  invite  the  attention  of  the  reader. 
The  declaration  refers  specifically  to  an  armed  con- 
flict,  and  to  a  conflict  between  numbers.  In  allusion 
to  the  capability  of  his  followers  to  have  defended  his 
person,  he  says,  ''  My  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world ; 

£2 


56 

if  my  kingdom  were  of  this  world,  then  would  my  ser 
vants  fight ;  that  I  should  not  he  delivered  to  the  Jews: 
but  now  is  my  kingdom  not  from  hence. "^  He  had 
before  forbidden  his  ^^  servants'^  to  fight  in  his  defence, 
and  now,  before  Pilate,  he  assigns  the  reason  for  it: 
"  my  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world."  This  is  the  very 
reason  which  we  are  urging  against  war.  We  say  that 
it  is  incompatible  with  his  kingdom — with  the  state 
which  he  came  into  the  world  to  introduce.  The  incom- 
patibility of  war  with  Christianity  is  yet  more  forcibly 
evinced  by  the  contrast  which  Christ  makes  between 
Ms  kingdom  and  others.  It  is  the  ordinary  practice  in 
the  world  for  subjects  to  "  fight,"  and  his  subjects 
would  have  fought  if  his  kingdom  had  been  of  this 
world ;  but  since  it  was  not  of  this  world, — since  its 
nature  was  purer  and  its  obligations  more  pacific, — 
therefore  they  might  not  fight. 

His  declaration  referred,  not  to  the  act  of  a  single 
individual  who  might  draw  his  sword  in  individual 
passion,  but  to  an  armed  engagement  between  hostile 
parties;  to  a  conflict  for  an  important  object,  which 
one  party  had  previously  resolved  on  attaining,  and 
which  the  other  were  ready  to  have  prevented  them 
from  attaining,  with  the  sword.  It  refers,  therefore, 
strictly  to  a  conflict  between  armed  numbers ;  and  to 
a  conflict  which,  it  should  be  remembered,  was  in  a 
much  better  cause  than  any  to  which  we  can  now  pre- 
tend, f 

It  is  with  the  apostles  as  with  Christ  himself     The 

*  John  xviii.  36. 

-j-  In  the  publication  to  which  the  note,  page  45,  refers,  the  author  informs 
us  that  the  reason  why  Christ  forbade  his  followers  to  fight  in  his  defence, 
was,  that  it  would  have  been  to  oppose  the  government  of  the  country.  I 
am  glad  no  better  evasion  can  be  found  ;  and  this  would  not  have  been  found, 
if  the  author  had  consulted  the  reason  assigned  by  the  Prohibitor,  before  h© 
promul^ted  his  own. 


57 

incessant  object  of  their  discourses  and  writings  is  the 
inculcation  of  peace,  of  mildness,  of  placability.  It 
might  be  supposed  that  they  continually  retained  in 
prospect  the  reward  which  would  attach  to  "  peace- 
makers." We  ask  the  advocate  of  war,  whether  he 
discovers  in  the  writings  of  the  apostles,  or  of  the 
evangelists,  any  thing  that  indicates  they  approved  of 
war.  Do  the  tenor  and  spirit  of  their  writings  bear 
any  congruity  with  it?  Are  not  their  spirit  and  tenor 
entirely  discordant  with  it  ?  We  are  entitled  to  renew 
the  observation,  that  the  pacific  nature  of  the  apostolic 
writings  proves  presumptively  that  the  writers  disal- 
lowed war.  That  could  not  be  allowed  by  them,  as 
sanctioned  by  Christianity,  which  outraged  all  the 
principles  that  they  inculcated. 

"Whence  come  wars  and  fightings  amongst  you?" 
is  the  interrogation  of  one  of  the  apostles,  to  some 
w^hom  he  was  reproving  for  their  unchristian  conduct. 
And  he  answers  himself  by  asking  them,  ''  come  they 
not  hence,  even  of  your  lusts  that  war  in  your  mem- 
bers ?"*  This  accords  precisely  with  the  argument 
that  we  urge.  Christ  forbade  the  passions  which  lead 
to  war ;  and  now,  when  these  passions  had  broken  out 
into  actual  fighting,  his  apostle,  in  condemning  war, 
refers  it  back  to  their  passions.  We  have  been  saying 
that  the  passiojis  are  condemned^  and,  therefore,  war ; 
and  now,  again,  the  apostle  James  thinks,  like  his 
Master,  that  the  most  effectual  way  of  eradicating  war 
is  to  eradicate  the  passions  which  produce  it. 

In  the  following  quotation  we  are  told,  not  only  what 
the  arms  of  the  apostles  were  not,  but  what  they  were. 
"  The  weapons  of  our  warfare  are  not  carnal,  but 
mighty,  through  God,  to  the  pulling  down  of  strong 
holds,  and  bringing  into  captivity  every  thought  to  the 

*  James  iv.  1. 
II 


58 

obedience  of  Christ. ^^^  I  quote  this,  not  only  because  it 
assures  us  that  the  apostles  had  nothing  to  do  with  mili- 
tar}^  weapons,  but  because  it  tells  us  the  object  of  their 
warfare — the  bringing  every  thought  to  the  obedience 
of  Christ :  and  this  object  I  would  beg  the  reader  to 
notice,  because  it  accords  with  the  object  of  Christ 
himself  in  his  precepts  from  the  mount — the  reduction 
of  the  thoughts  to  obedience.  The  apostle  doubtless 
knew  that,  if  he  could  effect  this,  there  was  little  rea- 
son to  fear  that  his  converts  would  slaughter  one  an- 
other. He  followed  the  example  of  his  Master.  He 
attacked  wickedness  in  its  root ;  and  inculcated 
those  general  principles  of  purity  arid  forbearance, 
which,  in  their  prevalence,  w^ould  abolish  war,  as  they 
would  abolish  all  other  crimes.  The  teachers  of 
Christianity  addressed  themselves,  not  to  communities, 
but  men.  They  enforced  the  regulation  of  the  passions 
and  the  rectification  of  the  heart ;  and  it  was  probably 
clear  to  the  perceptions  of  apostles,  although  it  is  not 
clear  to  some  species  of  philosophy,  that  whatever  du- 
ties were  binding  upon  one  man,  were  binding  upon 
ten,  upon  a  hundred,  and  upon  the  state. 

War  is  not  often  directly  noticed  in  the  writings  of 
the  apostles.  When  it  is  noticed,  it  is  condemned 
just  in  that  way  in  which  we  should  suppose  any  thing 
would  be  condemned,  that  was  notorioushj  opposed  to 
the  whole  system — just  as  murder  is  condemned  at  the 
present  day.  Who  can  find,  in  modern  books,  that 
murder  is  formally  censured  ?  We  may  find  censures 
of  its  motives,  of  its  circumstances,  of  its  degrees  of 
atrocity  ;  but  the  act  itself  no  one  thinks  of  censuring, 
because  every  one  hnorvs  that  it  is  wicked.  Setting 
statutes  aside,  I  doubt  whether,  if  an  Otaheitan  should 
choose  to  argue  that  Christians  allow  murder  because 

*  2  Cot.  v.  4. 


59 

he  cannot  find  it  formally  prohibited  in  their  writings, 
we  should  not  be  at  a  loss  to  find  direct  evidence  against 
him.  And  it  arises,  perhaps,  from  the  same  causes, 
that  a  formal  prohibition  of  war  is  not  to  be  found  in 
the  writings  of  the  apostles.  I  do  not  believe  they 
imagined  that  Christianity  would  ever  be  charged  with 
allowing  it.  They  write  as  if  the  idea  of  such  a  charge 
never  occurred  to  them.  They  did,  nevertheless,  vir- 
tually forbid  it;  unless  any  one  shall  say  that  they  dis- 
allowed the  passions  which  occasion  war,  but  did  not 
disallow  war  itself;  that  Christianity  prohibits  the  cause, 
but  permits  the  effect ;  which  is  much  the  same  as  to 
say  that  a  law  which  forbade  the  administering  of  ar- 
senic, did  not  forbid  poisoning. — And  this  sort  of  reason- 
ing, strange  and  illogical  as  it  is,  we  shall  by  and  by 
find  has  been  gravely  adopted  against  us. 

But  although  the  general  tenor  of  Christianity,  and 
many  of  its  direct  precepts,  appear  to  me  to  condemn 
and  disallow  war,  it  is  certain  that  different  conclusions 
have  been  formed;  and  many,  who  are  undoubtedly 
desirous  of  performing  the  duties  of  Christianity,  have 
failed  to  perceive  that  war  is  unlawful  to  them. 

In  examining  the  arguments  by  which  war  is  de- 
fended, two  important  considerations  should  be  borne 
in  mind — first,  that  those  who  urge  them,  are  not  sim- 
ply defending  war,  they  are  also  defending  themselves. 
If  war  be  wrong,  their  conduct  is  wrong;  and  the  de 
sire  of  self  justification  prompts  them  to  give  import- 
ance to  whatever  arguments  they  can  advance  in  its 
favour.  Their  decisions  may  therefore,  with  reason,  be 
regarded  as  in  some  degree  the  decisions  of  a  party  in 
the  cause.  The  other  consideration  is,  that  the  defend 
ers  of  war  come  to  the  discussion  prepossessed  m  its 
favour.  They  are  attached  to  it  by  their  earliest  habits. 
They  do  not  examine  the  question  as  a  philosopher 


60 

would  examine  it,  to  whom  the  subject  was  new.  Their 
opinions  had  been  already  formed.  They  are  discuss- 
ing a  question  which  they  had  already  determined. 
And  every  man,  who  is  acquainted  with  the  eifects  of 
evidence  on  the  mind,  knows  that  under  these  circum- 
stances, a  very  slender  argument  in  favour  of  the  previ- 
ous opinions  possesses  more  influence  than  many  great 
ones  against  it.  Now  all  this  cannot  be  predicated  of 
the  advocates  of  peace;  they  are  opposing  the  influence 
of  habit — they  are  contending  against  the  general  pre- 
judice— they  are,  perhaps,  dismissing  their  own  previ- 
ous opinions.  And  I  would  submit  it  to  the  candour  of 
the  reader,  that  these  circumstances  ought  to  attach  in 
his  mind,  suspicion  to  the  validity  of  the  arguments 
against  us. 

The  narrative  of  the  centurion  who  came  to  Jesus 
at  Capernaum,  to  solicit  him  to  heal  his  servant,  fur- 
nishes one  of  these  arguments.  It  is  said  that  Christ 
found  no  fault  with  the  centurion's  profession;  that  if 
he  had  disallowed  the  military  character,  he  would  have 
taken  this  opportunity  of  censuring  it;  and  that,  in- 
stead of  such  censure,  he  highly  commended  the  officer, 
and  said  of  him,  *'I  have  not  found  so  great  faith,  no, 
not  in  Israel."* 

An  obvious  weakness  in  this  argument  is  this ;  that 
it  is  founded,  not  upon  approval,  but  upon  silence.  Ap- 
probation is  indeed  expressed,  but  it  is  directed,  not  to 
his  arms,  but  to  his  faith;  and  those  who  will  read  the 
narrative  will  find  that  no  occasion  was  given  for  notic- 
ing his  profession.  He  came  to  Christ,  not  as  a  military 
officer,  but  simply  as  a  deserving  man.  A  censure  of 
his  profession  might,  undoubtedly,  have  been  pronounc- 
ed, but  it  would  have  been  a  gratuitous  censure,  a  cen- 
sure that  did  not  naturally  arise  out  of  the  case.     The 

Matt.  viii.  10. 


61 

objection  is  in  its  greatest  weight  presumptive  only,  for 
none  can  be  supposed  to  countenance  every  thing  that 
he  does  not  condemn.  To  observe  silence^  in  such 
cases  was,  indeed,  the  ordinary  practice  of  Christ.  He 
very  seldom  interfered  with  the  civil  and  political  insti- 
tutions of  the  world.  In  these  institutions  there  was 
sufficient  wickedness  around  him,  but  some  of  them, 
flagitious  as  they  were,  he  never,  on  any  occasion,  even 
noticed.  His  mode  of  condemning  and  extirpating  po- 
litical vices  was  by  the  inculcation  of  general  rules  of 
purity,  which,  in  their  eventual  and  universal  applica- 
tion, would  reform  them  all. 

But  how  happens  it  that  Christ  did  not  notice  the 
centurion's  religion?  He  surely  was  an  idolater.  And 
is  there  not  as  good  reason  for  maintaining  that  Christ 
approved  idolatry,  because  he  did  not  condemn  it,  as 
that  he  approved  war  because  he  did  not  condemn  it? 
Reasoninor  from  analoo^v,  we  should  conclude  that  idol- 
atry  w^as  likely  to  have  been  noticed  rather  than  war; 
and  it  is  therefore  peculiarly  and  singularly  unapt  to 
bring  forward  the  silence  respecting  war  as  an  evi- 
dence of  its  lawfulness. 

A  similar  argument  is  advanced  from  the  case  of 
Cornelius,  to  whom  Peter  was  sent  from  Joppa;  of 
which  it  is  said,  that  although  the  gospel  was  imparted 
to  Cornelius  by  the  especial  direction  of  Heaven,  yet 
we  do  not  find  that  he  therefore  quitted  his  profession, 
or  that  it  was  considered  inconsistent  with  his  new 
character.  The  objection  applies  to  this  argument  as 
to  the  last,  that  it  is  built  upon  silence,  that  it  is  sim- 
ply negative.  We  do  not  find  that  he  quitted  the 
service : — I  might  answer.  Neither  do  we  find  that  he 
continued  in  it.  We  only  know  nothing  of  the  matter  : 
and  the  evidence  is  therefore  so  much  less  than  proof, 

*  See  a  future  quotation  from  the  "  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy.  '* 


62 

as  silence  is  less  than  approbation.  Yet,  that  the 
account  is  silent  respecting  any  disapprobation  of  war, 
might  have  been  a  reasonable  ground  of  argument 
under  different  circumstances.  It  might  have  been  a 
reasonable  ground  of  argument,  if  the  primary  object 
of  Christianity  had  been  the  reformation  of  political 
institutions,  or,  perhaps,  even  if  her  primary  object 
had  been  the  regulation  of  the  external  conduct;  but 
her  primary  object  was  neither  of  these.  She  directed 
herself  to  the  reformation  of  the  heart,  knowing  that 
all  other  reformation  would  follow.  She  embraced 
indeed  both  morality  and  policy,  and  has  reformed  or 
will  reform  both — not  so  much  immediately  as  conse- 
quently ;  not  so  much  by  filtering  the  current,  as  by 
purifying  the  spring.  The  silence  of  Peter,  therefore, 
in  the  case  of  Cornelias,  will  serve  the  cause  of  war 
but  little ;  that  little  is  diminished  when  urged  against 
the  positive  evidence  of  commands  and  prohibitions, 
and  it  is  reduced  to  nothingness,  when  it  is  opposed  to 
the  universal  tendency  and  object  of  the  revelation. 

It  has  sometimes  been  urged  that  Christ  paid  taxes 
to  the  Roman  government  at  a  time  when  it  was  en- 
gaged in  war,  and  when,  therefore,  the  money  that  he 
paid  would  be  employed  in  its  prosecution.  This  we 
shall  readily  grant ;  but  it  appears  to  be  forgotten  by 
our  opponents  that,  if  this  proves  war  to  be  lawful, 
they  are  proving  too  much.  These  taxes  were  thrown 
into  the  exchequer  of  the  state,  and  a  part  of  the 
money  was  applied  to  purposes  of  a  most  iniquitous  and 
shocking  nature ;  sometimes  probably  to  the  gratifica- 
tion of  the  emperor's  personal  vices  and  to  his  gla- 
diatorial exhibitions,  &c.,  and  certainly  to  the  support 
of  a  miserable  idolatry.  If,  therefore,  the  payment  of 
taxes  to  such  a  government  proves  an  approbation  of 
war,  it  proves  an  approbation  of  many  other  enormi- 


63 

ties.  Moreover,  the  argument  goes  too  far  in  relation 
even  to  war;  for  it  mnst  necessarily  make  Christ 
approve  of  all  the  Roman  wars,  without  distinction  of 
their  justice  or  injustice — of  the  most  ambitious,  the 
most  atrocious,  and  the  most  aggressive;  and  these 
even  our  objectors  will  not  defend.  The  payment  of 
tribute  by  our  Lord  was  accordant  with  his  usual  sys- 
tem of  avoiding  to  interfere  in  the  civil  or  political 
institutions  of  the  world. 

"  Let  him  that  has  no  sword  sell  his  garment,  and 
buy  one."*  This  is  another  passage  that  is  brought 
against  us.  "For  what  purpose,"  it  is  asked,  "were 
they  to  buy  swords,  if  swords  might  not  be  used  ?"  I 
doubt  whether  with  some  of  those  who  advanced  this 
objection,  it  is  not  an  objection  of  words  rather  than  of 
opinion.  I  doubt  whether  they  themselves  think  there 
is  any  weight  in  it.  To  those,  however,  who  may 
be  influenced  by  it,  I  would  observe,  that,  as  it  appears 
to  me,  a  sufficient  answer  to  the  objection  may  be 
found  in  the  immediate  context : — "  Lord,  behold  here 
are  two  swords,"  said  they ;  and  he  immediately 
answered,  "  It  is  enough."  How  could  two  be  enough 
when  eleven  were  to  be  supplied  with  them  ?  That 
swords,  in  the  sense  and  for  the  purpose  of  military 
weapons,  were  even  intended  in  this  passage,  there 
appears  much  reason  for  doubting.  This  reason  will 
be  discovered  by  examining  and  connecting  such 
expressions  as  these  :  "  The  Son  of  man  is  not  come 
to  destroy  men's  lives,  but  to  save  them,"  said  our 
Lord.  Yet,  on  another  occasion,  he  says,  "  I  came 
not  to  send  peace  on  earth,  but  a  sword.''  How  are 
we  to  explain  the  meaning  of  the  latter  declaration  ? 
Obviously  by  understanding  "sword"  to  mean  some- 
thing far  other  than   steel.     For  myself,  I  see  little 

F 

*  Luke  xxii.  36. 


64 

reason  for  supposing  that  physical  weapons  were  in- 
tended in  the  instruction  of  Christ.  .  I  beheve  they 
were  not  intended,  partly  because  no  one  can  imagine 
his  apostles  were  in  the  habit  of  using  such  arms, 
partly  because  they  declared  that  the  weapons  of  their 
warfare  were  not  carnal,  and  partly  because  the  word 
^^  sword'^  is  often  used  to  imply  ''dissension,"  or  the 
rehgious  warfare  of  the  Christian.  Such  a  use  of 
language  is  found  in  the  last  quotation ;  and  it  is  found 
also  in  such  expressions  as  these  :  ''shield  of  faith" — 
''helmet  of  salvation" — "sword  of  the  Spirit" — *'I 
have  fought  the  good  Jight  of  faith." 

But  it  will  be  said  that  the  apostles  did  provide 
themselves  with  swords,  for  that  on  the  same  evening 
they  asked,  "  shall  we  smite  with  the  sword  ?"  This 
IS  true,  and  I  think  it  may  probably  be  true  also,  that 
some  of  them  provided  themselves  with  swords  in  con- 
sequence  of  the  injunction  of  their  Master.  But  what 
then  ?  The  reader  of  the  New  Testament  will  find 
that  hitherto  the  destined  teachers  of  Christianity  were 
very  imperfectly  acquainted  with  the  nature  of  their 
Master's  religion — their  conceptions  of  it  were  yet  gross 
and  Jewish.  The  very  question  that  is  brought 
against  us,  and  the  succeeding  conduct  of  Peter,  evince 
how  little  they  yet  knew  that  His  kingdom  was  not  of 
this  world,  and  that  his  servants  might  not  fight.  Even 
after  the  resurrection,  they  seemed  to  be  still  expect- 
ing that  his  purpose  was  to  establish  a  temporal 
government,  by  the  inquiry — "  Lord,  wilt  thou  at  this 
time  restore  again  the  kingdom  unto  Israel  ?"*  Why 
do  we  avail  ourselves  of  the  conduct  of  the  apostles, 
before  they  themselves  knew  the  duties  of  Christianity  t 
Why,  if  this  example  of  Peter  be  authority  to  us,  do  we 

*  Acts  i.  6. 


65 

not  approve  the  subsequent  example  of  this  same  apos* 
tie,  in  denying  his  Master? 

Why,  indeed,  do  we  urge  the  conduct  of  Peter  at 
all,  when  that  conduct  was  immediately  condemned  by 
Christ?  And,  had  it  not  been  condemned,  how  hap- 
pens it,  that  if  he  allowed  his  followers  the  use  of  arms, 
he  healed  the  only  wound  which  we  find  they  ever 
inflicted  with  them  ? 

It  appears  to  me,  that  the  apostles  acted  on  this  occa- 
sion upon  the  principles  on  which  they  had  wished  to 
act  on  another,  when  they  asked,  "•  Shall  we  command 
fire  to  come  down  from  heaven  to  consume  them  ?" 
And  that  their  Master's  principles  of  action  were  also 
the  same  in  both — "■  Ye  know  not  what  manner  of 
spirit  ye  are  of;  for  the  Son  of  man  is  not  come  to 
destroy  men's  lives,  but  to  save  them."  This  is  the 
language  of  Christianity ;  and  I  would  seriously  invite 
him  who  now  justifies  ''destroying  men's  lives,"  to 
consider  what  manner  of  spirit  he  is  of. 

I  think,  then,  that  no  argument  arising  from  the 
instruction  to  buy  swords  can  be  maintained.  This,  at 
least,  we  know,  that  when  the  apostles  were  completely 
commissioned,  they  neither  used  nor  possessed  them. 
An  extraordinary  imagination  he  must  have,  who  con- 
ceives of  an  apostle,  preaching  peace  and  reconcilia- 
tion, crying  ''  forgive  injuries" — "  love  your  enemies" 
— ''render  not  evil  for  evil;"  and  at  the  conclusion 
of  the  discourse,  if  he  chanced  to  meet  with  violence  or 
insult,  promptly  drawing  his  sword,  and  maiming  or 
murdering  the  offender.  We  insist  upon  this  consider 
ation.  If  swords  were  to  be  worn,  swords  were  to 
be  used;  and  there  is  no  rational  wa}^  in  which  they 
could  have  been  used,  but  some  such  as  that  which  we 
have  been  supposing.  If,  therefore,  the  words,  "Let 
him  that  has  no  sword  sell  his  garment,  and  buy  one," 


66 

do  not  mean  to  authorize  such  a  use  of  the  sword,  they 
do  not  mean  to  authorize  its  use  at  all :  And  those  who 
adduce  the  passage  must  allow  its  appUcation  in  such 
a  sense,  or  they  must  exclude  it  from  any  application 
to  their  purpose. 

It  has  been  said,  again,  that  when  soldiers  came  to 
John  the  Baptist  to  inquire  of  him  what  they  should 
do,  he  did  not  direct  them  to  leave  the  service,  but  to 
be  content  with  their  wages.  This,  also,  is  at  best  but 
a  negative  evidence.  It  does  not  prove  that  the  mili- 
tary profession  was  wrong,  and  it  certainly  does  not 
prove  that  it  was  right.  But  in  truth,  if  it  asserted  the 
latter,  Christians  have,  as  I  conceive,  nothing  to  do 
with  it;  for  I  think  that  w^e  need  not  inquire  what 
John  allowed,  or  what  he  forbade.  He,  confessedly, 
belonged  to  that  system  which  required  "an  eye  for  an 
eye,  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth;"  and  the  observations 
which  we  shall  by-and-by  make  on  the  authority  of  the 
law  of  Moses,  apply,  therefore,  to  that  of  John  the  Bap- 
tist. Although  it  could  be  proved  (which  it  cannot 
be)  that  he  allowed  wars,  he  acted  not  inconsistently 
with  his  own  dispensation ;  and  with  that  dispensation 
we  have  no  business.  Yet,  if  any  one  still  insists  upon 
the  authority  of  John,  I  would  refer  him  for  an  answer 
to  Jesus  Christ  himself  What  authority  He  attached 
to  John  on  questions  relating  to  his  own  dispensation, 
may  be  learned  from  this — "  The  least  in  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  is  greater  than  he. " 

Such  are  the  arguments  which  are  adduced  from  the 
Christian  Scriptures,  by  the  advocates  of  war.  Of 
these  arguments,  those  derived  fron  the  cases  of  the 
centurion  and  of  Cornelius,  are  simply  negative.  It  is 
not  pretended  that  they  possess  ^roo/1  Their  strength 
consists  in  silence,  and  of  this  silence  there  appears  to 
be  sufficient  explanation.     Of  the  objection  arising 


67 

from  the  payment  of  tribute,  I  know  not  who  will  avail 
himself  It  is  nullified  by  itself  A  nearly  similar 
observation  applies  to  the  instruction  to  buy  sivords; 
and  with  the  case  of  John  the  Baptist  I  do  not  conceive 
that  we  have  any  concern.  In  these  five  passages,  the 
sum  of  the  New  Testament  evidences  in  favour  of  war 
unquestionably  consists  :  they  are  the  passages  which 
men  of  acute  minds,  studiously  seeking  for  evidence, 
have  selected.  And  what  are  they  ?  There  is  not  one 
of  them,  except  the  payment  of  tribute  and  the  instruc- 
tion to  buy  swords,  of  which  it  is  even  said  by  our 
opponents  that  it  proves  any  thing  in  favour  of  war. 
A  '*  not"  always  intervenes — the  centurion  was  not 
found  fault  with  :  Cornelius  was  not  told  to  leave  the 
profession :  John  did  not  tell  the  soldiers  to  abandon 
the  army.  I  cannot  forbear  to  solicit  the  reader  to 
compare  these  objections  with  the  pacific  evidence  ot 
the  gospel  which  has  been  laid  before  him ;  I  would 
rather  say  to  compare  it  with  the  gospel  itself;  for  the 
sum,  the  tendency  of  the  whole  revelation  is  in  our 
favour. 

In  an  inquiry  whether  Christianity  allows  of  war, 
there  is  a  subject  that  always  appears  to  me  to  be  of 
peculiar  importance — the  prophecies  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment respecting  the  arrival  of  a  period  of  universal 
peace.  The  belief  is  perhaps  general  among  Chris- 
tians, that  a  time  will  come  when  vice  shall  be  eradi- 
cated from  the  world,  when  the  violent  passions  of 
mankind  shall  be  repressed,  and  when  the  pure  benig- 
nity of  Christianity  shall  be  universally  diffused.  That 
such  a  period  will  come  we  indeed  know  assuredly,  for 
God  has  promised  it. 

Of   the   many   prophecies  of   the   Old   Testament 
respecting  it,  I  will  refer  only  to  a  few  from  the  writ 
ings  of  Isaiah.     In  his  predictions  respecting  the  "last 

F2 


68 

times,"  by  which  it  is  not  disputed  that  he  referred  to 
the  prevalence  of  the  Christian  religion,  the  prophet 
says, — ''  They  shall  beat  their  swords  into  plough- 
shares, and  their  spears  into  pruning-hooks ;  nation 
shall  not  lift  the  sword  against  nation,  neither  shall 
they  learn  war  any  more."*  Again,  referring  to  the 
same  period,  he  says, — ''  They  shall  not  hurt  nor  destroy 
in  all  my  holy  mountain,  for  the  knowledge  of  the 
Lord  shall  cover  the  earth  as  the  waters  cover  the 
sea."t  And  again,  respecting  the  same  era, — ''  Violence 
shall  be  no  more  heard  in  thy  land,  wasting  nor 
destruction  within  thy  borders. "J 

Two  things  are  to  be  observed  in  relation  to  these 
prophecies :  first,  that  it  is  the  will  of  G  od  that  war 
should  eventually  be  abolished.  This  consideration  is 
of  importance,  for  if  war  be  not  accordant  with  His 
will,  war  cannot  be  accordant  wdth  Christianity,  which 
is  the  revelation  of  His  will.  My  business,  however, 
is  principally  with  the  second  consideration — that 
Christianity  will  he  the  means  of  introducing  this  period 
of  peace.  From  those  who  say  that  our  religion  sanc- 
tions war,  an  answer  must  be  expected  to  questions 
such  as  these : — ^y  what  instrumentality  and  by  the 
diffusion  of  what  principles,  will  the  prophecies  of 
Isaiah  be  fulfilled  ?  Are  we  to  expect  some  new  sys- 
tem of  religion,  by  which  the  imperfections  of  Chris- 
tianity shall  be  removed,  and  its  deficiencies  supplied  ? 
Are  we  to  believe  that  God  sent  his  only  Son  into  the 
world  to  institute  a  relio^ion  such  as  this — a  relio^ion, 
that  in  a  few  centuries,  would  require  to  be  altered  and 
amended?  If  Christianity  allows  of  war,  they  must 
tell  us  what  it  is  that  is  to  extirpate  war.  If  she  allows 
"  violence,  and  wasting,  and  destruction,"  they  must 
tell  us  what  are   the  principles  that  are   to   produce 

*  Isaiah  ii.  4.  f  Ibid.  xi.  9.  %  Ibid   Ix.  18. 


69 

gentleness,  and  benevolence,  and  forbearance. — 1  know 
not  what  answer  such  inquiries  will  receive  from  the 
advocate  of  war,  but  I  know  that  Isaiah  says  the 
change  will  be  effected  by  Christianity :  And  if  any 
one  still  chooses  to  expect  another  and  a  purer  system, 
an  apostle  may  perhaps  repress  his  hopes : — "  If  we, 
or  an  angel  from  heaven,"  says  Paul,  "preach  any 
other  gospel  than  that  which  we  have  preached  unto 
you,  let  him  be  accursed."* 

Whatever  the  principles  of  Christianity  will  require 
hereafter,  they  require  now.  Christianity,  with  its 
'present  principles  and  ohligations^  is  to  produce  univer- 
sal peace.  It  becomes,  therefore,  an  absurdity,  a  sim- 
ple contradiction,  to  maintain  that  the  principles  of 
Christianity  allow  of  war,  when  they,  and  they  only, 
are  to  eradicate  it.  If  we  have  no  other  guarantee  of 
peace  than  the  existence  of  our  religion,  and  no  other 
hope  of  peace  than  in  its  diffusion,  how  can  that  reli- 
gion sanction  war  ?  The  conclusion  that  it  does  not 
sanction  it  appears  strictly  logical :  I  do  not  perceive 
that  a  demonstration  from  Euclid  can  be  clearer  ;  and 
I  think  that  if  we  possessed  no  other  evidence  of  the 
unlawfulness  of  war,  there  is  contained  in  this  a  proof 
which  prejudice  cannot  deny,  and  which  sophistry 
cannot  evade. 

The  case  is  clear.  A  more  perfect  obedience  to  that 
same  gospel,  which  we  are  told  sanctions  slaughter, 
will  be  the  means,  and  the  only  means,  of  exterminat- 
ing slaughter  from  the  world.  It  is  not  from  an  alter- 
ation of  Christianity,  but  from  an  assimilation  of 
Christians  to  its  nature,  that  we  are  to  hope.  It  is  be- 
cause we  violate  the  principles  of  our  religion,  because 

*  Gal.  i.  8. 


70 

we  are  not  what  they  require  us  to  be,  that  wars  are 
continued.  If  we  will  not  be  peaceable,  let  us  then,  at 
least,  be  honest,  and  acknowledge  that  we  continue  to 
slaughter  one  another,  not  because  Christianity  permits 
it,  but  because  we  reject  her  laws. 

The  Christian  ought  to  be  satisfied,  on  questions  con- 
nected with  his  duties,  by  the  simple  rules  of  his  reli- 
gion. If  those  rules  disallow  war,  he  should  inquire 
no  farther ;  but  since  I  am  willing  to  give  conviction 
to  the  reader  by  whatever  means,  and  since  truth  car- 
ries its  evidence  with  greater  force  from  accumulated 
testimony,  I  would  refer  to  two  or  three  other  subjects 
in  illustration  of  our  principles,  or  in  confirmation  of 
their  truth. 

The  opinions  of  the  earliest  professors  of  Christianity 
upon  the  lawfulness  of  war  are  of  importance;  because 
they  who  lived  nearest  to  the  time  of  its  Founder 
were  the  most  likely  to  be  informed  of  his  intentions 
and  his  will,  and  to  practise  them  without  those  adul- 
terations which  we  know  have  been  introduced  by  the 
lapse  of  ages. 

During  a  considerable  period  after  the  death  of 
Christ,  it  is  certain,  then,  that  his  followers  believed  he 
had  forbidden  war,  and  that,  in  consequence  of  this 
belief,  many  of  them  refused  to  engage  in  it,  whatever 
were  the  consequences,  whether  reproach,  or  imprison- 
ment, or  death.  These  facts  are  indisputable:  ''It  is 
as  easy,"  says  a  learned  writer  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, ''  to  obscure  the  sun  at  mid-day,  as  to  deny  that 
the  primitive  Christians  renounced  all  revenge  and 
war."  Of  all  the  Christian  writers  of  the  second  cen- 
tury, there  is  not  one  who  notices  the  subject,  who  does 
not  hold  it  to  be  unlawful  for  a  Christian  to  bear  arms ; 


V 


71 

"and,"  says  Clarkson,  "it  was  not  till  Christianity  be- 
came corrupted  that  Christians  became  soldiers."* 

Our  Saviour  inculcated  mildness  and  peaceableness ; 
we  have  seen  that  the  apostles  imbibed  his  spirit,  and 
followed  his  example;  and  the  early  Christians  pursued 
the  example  and  imbibed  the  spirit  of  both.  "  This 
sacred  principle,  this  earnest  recommendation  of  for- 
bearance, lenity,  and  forgiveness,  mixes  with  all  the 
writings  of  that  age.  There  are  more  quotations  in  the 
apostolical  fathers,  of  texts  which  relate  to  these  points 
than  of  any  other.  Christ's  sayings  had  struck  them. 
Not  rendering,  says  Polycarp  the  disciple  of  John, 
evil  for  evil,  or  railing  for  railing,  or  striking  for 
striking,  or  cursing  for  cursing ''^  Christ  and  his 
apostles  delivered  general  precepts  for  the  regulation 
of  our  conduct.  It  was  necessary  for  their  successors 
to  apply  them  to  their  practice  in  life.  And  to  what 
did  they  apply  the  pacific  precepts  which  had  been 
delivered  ?  They  applied  them  to  war :  they  were 
assured  that  the  precepts  absolutely  forbade  it.  This 
belief  they  derived  from  those  very  precepts  on  which 
we  have  insisted  :  They  referred,  expressly,  to  the 
same  passages  in  the  New  Testament,  and  from  the 
authority  and  obligation  of  those  passages,  they  refused 
to  bear  arms.  A  few  examples  from  their  history  will 
show  with  what  undoubting  confidence  they  believed 
in  the  unlawfulness  of  war,  and  how  much  they  were 
willing  to  suffer  in  the  cause  of  peace. 

Maximilian,  as  it  is  related  in  the  Acts  of  Ruinart, 
was  brought  before  the  tribunal  to  be  enrolled  as  a 
soldier.     On  the  proconsul's  asking  his  name,  Maximi- 

*  "  Essays  on  the  Doctrines  and  Practice  of  the  Early  Christians  as  they 
relate  to  Wa'r."  To  this  Essay  I  am  indebted  for  much  information  on  the 
present  part  of  our  subject. 

f  Pol.  Ep.  and  Phil.  C.  2.— Evidences  of  Christianity. 


72 

lian  replied,  *'I  am  a  Christian,  and  cannot  fight."  It 
was,  however,  ordered  that  he  should  be  enrolled,  but 
he  refused  to  serve,  still  alleging  that  he  was  a  Chris- 
tian. He  was  immediately  told  that  there  was  no 
alternative  between  bearing  arms  and  being  put  to 
death.  But  his  fidelity  was  not  to  be  shaken, — "1 
cannot  fight,"  said  he,  "if  I  die."  The  proconsul  asked 
who  had  persuaded  him  to  this  conduct;  ''My  own 
mind,"  said  the  Christian,  "and  He  who  has  called 
me."  It  was  once  m^ore  attempted  to  shake  his  resolu- 
tion by  appealing  to  his  youth  and  to  the  glory  of  the 
profession,  but  in  vain ; — "  I  cannot  fight,"  said  he, 
"for  any  earthly  consideration."  He  continued  stead- 
fast to  his  principles,  sentence  was  pronounced  upon 
him,  and  he  was  led  to  execution. 

The  primitive  Christians  not  only  refused  to  be 
enlisted  in  the  army,  but  when  they  embraced  Christi- 
anity whilst  already  enlisted,  they  abandoned  the  pro- 
fession at  whatever  cost.  Marcellus  was  a  centurion 
in  the  legion  called  Trajana.  Whilst  holding  this 
commission  he  became  a  Christian,  and  believing,  in 
common  with  his  fellow  Christians,  that  war  was  no 
longer  permitted  to  him,  he  threw  down  his  belt  at  the 
head  of  the  legion,  declaring  that  he  had  become  a 
Christian,  and  that  he  would  serve  no  longer.  He  was 
committed  to  prison ;  but  he  was  still  faithful  to  Chris- 
tianity. "  It  is  not  lawful,"  said  he,  "for  a  Christian 
to  bear  arms  for  any  earthly  consideration;"  and  he 
was  in  consequence  put  to  death.  Almost  immediately 
afterwards,  Cassian,  who  was  notary  to  the  same 
legion,  gave  up  his  oflace.  He  steadfastly  maintained 
the  sentiments  of  Marcellus,  and  like  him  was  consign- 
ed to  the  executioner.  Martin,  of  whom  so  much  is 
said  by  Sulpicius  Severus,  was  bred  to  the  profession 
of  arms,  which,  or  his  acceptance  of  Christianity,  he 


73 

abandoned.  To  Julian  the  apostate,  the  only  reason 
that  we  find  he  gave  for  his  conduct  was  this, — ''  I  am 
a  Christian,  and  therefore  I  cannot  fight."  The  an- 
swer of  Tarachus  to  Numerianus  Maximus  is  in 
words  nearly  similar:  — '-I  have  led  a  military  life, 
and  am  a  Roman;  and  because  I  am  a  Christian  I 
have  abandoned  m}^  profession  of  a  soldier." 

These  were  not  the  sentiments,  and  this  was  not  the 
conduct,  of  the  insulated  individuals  who  might  be 
actuated  by  individual  opinions,  or  by  their  private 
interpretations  of  the  duties  of  Christianity.  Their 
principles  were  the  principles  of  the  body.  They 
were  recognised  and  defended  by  the  Christian  writers 
their  contemporaries.  Justin  Martyr  and  Tatian  talk 
of  soldiers  and  Christians  as  distinct  characters;  and 
Tatian  says  that  the  Christians  declined  even  military 
commands.  Clemens  of  Alexandria  calls  his  Christian 
contemporaries  the  "Followers  of  Peace,"  and  expressly 
tells  us  that  "  the  followers  of  peace  used  none  of  the 
implements  of  war."  Lactantius,  another  early  Chris- 
tian, says  expressly,  "It  can  never  be  lawful  for  a 
righteous  man  to  go  to  war."  About  the  end  of  the 
second  century,  Celsus,  one  of  the  opponents  of  Chris- 
tianity, charged  the  Christians  with  7xf using  to  hear 
arms  even  in  case  of  necessity.  Origen,  the  defender  of 
the  Christians,  does  not  think  of  denying  the  fact ;  he 
admits  the  refusal,  and  justifies  it,  because  war  ivas 
unlawful.  "S^^qvl  after  Christianity  had  spread  over 
almost  the  whole  of  the  known  world,  Tertullian,  in 
speaking  of  a  part  of  the  Roman  armies,  including 
more  than  one  third  of  the  standing  legions  of  Rome, 
distinctly  informs  us  that  "  not  a  Christian  could  be 
found  amono^st  them." 

All  this  is  explicit.  The  evidence  of  the  following 
facts  is,  however,  yet  more  determinate  and  satisfactory. 


74 

Some  of  the  arguments  which,  at  the  present  day,  are 
brought  against  the  advocates  of  peace,  were  then 
urged  against  these  early  Christians;  and  these  argu- 
ments they  examined  and  lepeUed.  This  indicates  in- 
vestigation and  inquiry,  and  manifests  that  their  belief 
of  the  unlawfulness  of  war  was  not  a  vague  opinion, 
hastily  admitted,  and  loosely  floating  amongst  them ; 
but  that  it  was  the  result  of  deliberate  examination,  and 
a  consequent  firm  conviction  that  Christ  had  forbidden 
it.  TertuUian  says,  ''  Though  the  soldiers  came  to 
John  and  received  a  certain  form  to  be  observed,  yet 
Jesus  Christ,  by  disarming  Peter,  disarmed  every 
soldier  afterwards;  for  custom  never  sanctions  any 
unlawful  act."  ''Can  a  soldier's  life  be  lawful,"  says 
he,  in  another  work,  "when  Christ  has  pronounced 
that  he  who  lives  by  the  sword  shall  perish  by  the 
sword?  Can  any  one,  who  possesses  the  peaceable 
doctrine  of  the  gospel,  be  a  soldier,  when  it  is  his  duty 
not  so  much  as  to  go  to  law?  And  shall  he,  who  is 
not  to  revenge  his  own  wrongs,  be  instrumental  in 
bringing  others  into  chains,  imprisonment,  torture, 
death?"— So  that  the  very  same  arguments  which  are 
brought  in  defence  of  war  at  the  present  day,  were 
brought  against  the  Christians  sixteen  hundred  years 
ago;  and,  sixteen  hundred  years  ago,  they  were  repel- 
led by  these  faithful  contenders  for  the  purity  of  our 
religion.  It  is  remarkable,  too,  that  TertuUian  appeals 
to  the  precepts  from  the  mount,  in  proof  of  those  princi- 
ples on  which  this  Essay  has  been  insisting  -.—that  the 
dispositions  which  the  precepts  inculcate  are  not  compati- 
ble with  war,  and  that  war,  therefore,  is  irreconcileaUe 
with  Christianity. 

If  it  be  possible,  a  still  stronger  evidence  of  the  pri- 
mitive belief  is  contained  in  the  circumstance,  that 
some  of  the  Christian  authors  declared  that  the  refusal 


75 

of  the  Christian  to  hear  arms,  was  a  fulfilment  ot 
ancient  prophecy.  The  peculiar  strength  of  this  evi- 
dence consists  in  this — that  the  fact  of  a  refusal  to  bear 
arms  is  assumed  as  notorious  and  unquestioned.  Ire- 
nseus,  who  lived  about  anno  ISO,  affirms  that  the  pro- 
phecy of  Isaiah,  which  declared  that  men  should  turn 
their  swords  into  ploughshares,  and  their  spears  into 
pruning-hooks,  had  been  fulfilled  in  his  time;  "for  the 
Christians,"  says  he,  "  have  changed  their  swords  and 
their  lances  into  instruments  of  peace,  and  the^j  hiorv 
noinowhow  to  fight  ^''  Justin  Martyr,  his  contemporary, 
writes, — "  That  the  prophecy  is  fulfilled,  you  have 
good  reason  to  believe,  for  we,  who  in  times  past  killed 
one  another,  do  not  norv  fight  7vith  our  enemies''  Ter- 
tuUian,  who  lived  later,  says,  "  You  must  confess  that 
the  prophecy  has  been  accomplished,  as  far  as  the  prac- 
tice of  every  iiidividual  is  concerned,  to  whom  it  is  ap- 
plicable."^ 

It  has  been  sometimes  said,  that  the  motive  which 
influenced  the  early  Christians  to  refuse  to  engage  in 
war,  consisted  in  the  idolatry  which  was  connected 
with  the  Roman  armies.  One  motive  this  idolatry  un- 
questionably afforded ;  but  it  is  obvious,  from  the  quo- 
tations which  we  have  given,  that  their  belief  of  the 

*  These  examples  might  be  multiplied.  Enough,  however,  have  been 
given  to  establish  our  position  ;  and  the  reader  who  desires  further  or  more 
immediate  information,  is  referred  to  Justin  Mart,  in  Dialog,  cum  Tryph. 
ejusdemque  Apolog.  2. — ad  Zenam  :  Tertull.  de  corona  militis. — Apolog. 
cap.  21  and  37. — lib.  de  Idolol.  c.  17,  18,  19.— ad  Scapulam  cap.  1. — 
adversus  Jud.  cap.  7  and  9. — adv.  Gnost.  13. — adv.  Marc.  c.  4. — lib.  de 
patient,  c.  6.  10  :  Orig.  cont.  Celsum  lib.  3,  5,  8. — In  Josuara,  hom.  12.  cap. 
9. — in  Mat.  cap.  26.  Tract.  36 :  Cypr.  Epist.  56 — ad  Cornel.  Lactan.  de 
just.  lib.  5.  c.  18.  lib.  6.  c.  20:  ^mhr.  in  Luc.  22.  Chrysost.  in  Matth.  5. 
hom.  18.—  in  Matth.  26.  hom.  85. — ^lib.  2  de  Sacerdotio. — 1  Cor.  13  :  Cromat. 
in  Matth.  5.  Hieron,  ad  Ocean. — lib.  Epist.  p.  3.  torn.  1.  Ep.  2  :  Athan.  de 
Inc.  Verb.  Dei:  Cyrill.  Mex.  lib.  11.  in  Johan.  cap.  25,  26.  See  also 
Erasmus.  Luc.  cap.  3,  and  22.  Ludov.  Vives  in  Introd.  ad  Sap :  /  Ferus 
-il  4  Comment  in  Matth.  7  and  Luc.  22. 
G 


76 

unlawfulness  oi  fighting,  independent  of  any  question 
of  idolatry,  was  an  insviperable  objection  to  engaging  in 
war.  Their  words  are  explicit :  "  I  cannot  fight  if  I 
die." — ''  I  am  a  Christian,  and,  therefore,  I  cannot 
fight'' — "Christ,"  says  TertuUian,  ''hy  disarming 
Peter,  disarmed  every  soldier ;"  and  Peter  was  not 
about  to  fight  in  the  armies  of  idolatry.  So  entire  was 
their  conviction  of  the  incompatibility  of  war  with  our 
religion,  that  they  would  not  even  he  present  at  the 
gladiatorial  fights,  "  lest,"  says  Theophilus,  "■  we  should 
become  partakers  of  the  murders  committed  there." 
Can  any  one  believe  that  they  who  would  not  even 
witness  a  battle  between  tw^o  men,  w^ould  themselves 
fight  in  a  battle  between  armies  ?  And  the  destruction 
of  a  gladiator,  it  should  be  remembered,  was  author- 
ized by  the  state  as  much  as  the  destruction  of  enemies 
in  war. 

It  is,  therefore,  indisputable,  that  the  Christians  who 
lived  nearest  to  the  time  of  our  Saviour,  believed,  with 
undoubting  confidence,  that  he  had  unequivocally  for- 
bidden war — that  they  openly  avowed  this  belief,  and 
that,  in  support  of  it,  they  were  willing  to  sacrifice,  and 
did  sacrifice,  their  fortunes  and  their  lives. 

Christians,  however,  afterwards  became  soldiers. 
And  when? — When  their  general  fidelity  to  Chris- 
tianity became  relaxed  ; — when,  ^V^  other  respects,  they 
violated  its  principles ; — when  they  had  begun  "  to 
dissemble,"  and  ''to  falsify  their  word,"  and  "to  cheat;" 
— when  "  Christian  casuists"  had  persuaded  them  that 
they  might  '' sit  at  meat  in  theidoTs  temple  T — when 
Christians  accepted  even  the  priesthoods  of  idolatry.  In 
a  word,  they  became  soldiers,  w^hen  they  had  ceased  to 
be  Christians. 

The  departure  from  the  original  faithfulness  was, 
however,  not  suddenly  general.     Like  every  other  cor- 


77 

ruption,  war  obtained  by  degrees.  During  the  first  two 
hundred  years,  not  a  Christian  soldier  is  upon  record. 
In  the  third  century,  when  Christianity  became  par- 
tially corrupted.  Christian  soldiers  were  common.  The 
number  increased  with  the  increase  of  the  general  pro- 
fligacy ;  until  at  last,  in  the  fourth  century,  Christians 
became  soldiers  without  hesitation,  and,  perhaps,  with- 
out remorse.  Here  and  there,  however,  an  ancient 
father  still  lifted  up  his  voice  for  peace ;  but  these,  one 
after  another,  dropping  from  the  world,  the  tenet  that 
war  is  unlawful,  ceased  at  length  to  be  a  tenet  of  the 
church. 

Such  was  the  origin  of  the  present  belief  in  the 
lawfulness  of  war.  It  began  in  unfaithfulness,  was 
nurtured  by  profligacy,  and  was  confirmed  by  general 
corruption.  We  seriously,  then,  and  solemnly  invite 
the  conscientious  Christian  of  the  present  day,  to  con- 
sider these  things.  Had  the  professors  of  Christianity 
continued  in  the  purity  and  faithfulness  of  their  fore- 
fathers, we  should  now  have  believed  that  war  was  for- 
bidden ;  and  Europe,  many  long  centuries  ago,  would 
have  reposed  in  peace. 

Let  it  always  be  borne  in  mind  by  those  who  are 
advocating  war,  that  they  are  contending  for  a  corrup- 
tion w^hich  their  forefathers  abhorred  ;  and  that  they 
are  making  Jesus  Christ  the  sanctioner  of  crimes, 
which  his  purest  followers  offered  up  their  lives  because 
they  would  not  commit. 

An  argument  has  sometimes  been  advanced  in  favour 
of  war  from  the  Divine  communications  to  the  Jews 
under  the  administration  of  Moses.  It  has  been  said 
that  as  wars  were  allowed  and  enjoined  to  that  people, 
they  cannot  be  inconsistent  with  the  will  of  God. 

We  have  no  intention  to  dispute,  that,  under  the 
Mosaic  dispensation,  some  wars  were  allowed,  or  that 


78 

tliey  were  enjoined  upon  the  Jews  as  an  imperative 
duty.  But  those  who  refer,  in  justification  of  our  pre- 
sent practice,  to  the  authority  by  which  the  Jews  pro- 
secuted their  wars,  must  be  expected  to  produce  the 
same  authority  for  our  own.  Wars  were  commandea 
to  tiie  Jews,  but  are  they  commanded  to  us  ?  War,  in 
the  abstract,  was  never  commanded.  And,  surely, 
those  specific  wars  which  were  enjoined  upon  the  Jews 
for  an  express  purpose,  are  neither  authority  nor  exam- 
ple for  us,  who  have  received  no  such  injunction,  and 
can  plead  no  such  purpose. 

It  will,  perhaps,  be  said  that  the  commands  to  prose- 
cute wars,  even  to  extermination,  are  so  positive  and  so 
often  repeated,  that  it  is  not  probable,  if  they  were 
inconsistent  with  the  will  of  Heaven,  they  would 
have  been  thus  peremptorily  enjoined.  We  answer, 
that  they  were  not  inconsistent  with  the  will  of  Hea- 
ven then.  But  even  then,  the  prophets  foresaw  that 
they  were  not  accordant  with  the  universal  will  of  God, 
since  they  predicted  that  when  that  will  should  be  ful- 
filled, war  should  be  eradicated  from  the  world.  And 
by  what  dispensation  was  this  wiJl  to  be  fulfilled  ?  By 
that  of  the  ''Rod  out  of  the  stem  of  Jesse." 

But  what  do  those  who  refer  to  the  dispensation  of 
Moses  maintain?  Do  they  say  that  the  injunctions  to 
the  Jews  are  binding  upon  them  ?  If  they  say  this, 
we  have  at  least  reason  to  ask  them  for  greater  consist- 
ency of  obedience.  That  these  injunctions,  in  point 
of  fact,  do  not  bind  them,  they  give  sufficient  proof,  by 
the  neglect  of  the  greater  portion  of  them,  enforced  as 
those  injunctions  were,  by  the  same  authority  as  that 
which  commanded  war.  They  have,  therefore,  so  far 
as  their  argument  is  concerned,  annulled  the  injunctions 
by  their  own  rejection  of  them.     And  out  of  ten  pre^ 


79 

oepts  to  reject  nine  and  retain  one,  is  a  gratuitous  and 
idle  mode  of  argument. 

If  I  be  told  that  we  still  acknowledge  the  obliga- 
tion of  many  of  these  precepts,  I  answer  that  we 
acknowledge  the  duties  which  they  enjoin,  but  not 
because  of  the  authority  which  enjoined  them.  We 
obey  the  injunctions,  not  because  they  were  delivered 
under  the  law,  but  because  they  are  enforced  by  Chris- 
tianity. The  command,  ''  Thoa  shalt  not  kill,"  has 
never  been  abolished;  but  Christians  do  not  prohibit 
murder  because  it  was  denounced  in  the  decalogue, 
they  would  have  prohibited  it  if  the  decalogue  had 
never  existed. 

But  farther  :  Some  of  the  commands  under  the  law, 
Christianity  7xquires  us  to  disobey.  '^If  d  man  have  a 
stuhhorn  and  rebellious  son,  which  will  not  obey  the 
voice  of  his  father,  &c.  all  the  men  of  the  city  shall 
stone  him  with  stones  that  he  die.^  If  thy  brother,  the 
son  of  thy  mother,  or  thy  son,  or  thy  daughter,  or  the 
wife  of  thy  bosom,  entice  thee  secretly,  saying,  '  Let  us 
go  and  serve  other  gods^  thou  shalt  not  pity  him  or 
conceal  him,  but  thou  shalt  surely  kill  him ;  thine  hand 
shall  be  first  upon  him  to  put  him  to  deathJ'^  Now  we 
know  that  Christianity  will  not  sanction  an  obedience 
of  these  commands;  and  if  we  did  obey  them,  our 
own  laws  would  treat  us  as  murderers.  If  the  precepts 
under  the  dispensation  of  Moses  are  binding  because 
they  were  promulgated  by  Heaven,  they  are  binding 
in  all  their  commands  and  all  their  prohibitions.  But 
some  of  these  precepts  we  habitually  disregard,  and 
some  it  were  criminal  to  obey  ;  and  with  what  reason 
then  do  we  refer  to  them  in  our  defence  1 

And  why  was  the  law  superseded?  Because  it 
"made   nothing  perfect." — ^'The  law  was  given  by 

*  Deut.  xxi.  18,  21.  f  Deut.  xiii.  9. 


80 

Moses,  but  grace  and  truth  came  by  Jesus  Christ.' 
The  manner  in  which  the  author  of  "truth"  prefaced 
some  of  his  most  important  precepts,  is  much  to  our 
present  purpose.  "■  It  hath  been  said  by  them  of  old 
time,  an  eye  for  an  eye,"  &c.  He  then  introduces  his 
own  precept  with  the  contradistinguishing  preface — 
"But  /  say  unto  you."  This,  therefore,  appears  to  be 
a  specific  abrogation  of  the  authority  of  the  legal 
injunctions,  and  an  introduction  of  another  system; 
and  this  is  all  that  our  present  purpose  requires.  The 
truth  is,  that  the  law  was  abolished  because  of  its  im- 
perfections ;  yet  we  take  hold  of  one  of  these  imperfec- 
tions in  justification  of  our  present  practice.  Is  it 
because  we  feel  that  we  cannot  defend  it  by  our  own 
religion  ? 

We  therefore  dismiss  the  dispensation  of  Moses 
from  any  participation  in  the  argument.  Whatever  it 
allowed,  or  whatever  it  prohibited  in  relation  to  war, 
we  do  not  inquire.  We  ask  only  what  Christianity 
allows  and  prohibits,  and  by  this  we  determine  the 
question. — It  is  the  more  necessary  to  point  out  the  inap- 
plicability of  these  arguments  from  the  Old  Testament, 
because  there  are  some  persons  of  desultory  modes  of 
thinking,  who  find  that  war  is  allowed  in  "  the  Bible," 
and  who  forget  to  inquire  into  the  present  authority  of 
the  permission. 

There  are  some  persons  who  suppose  themselves 
sufiiciently  justified  in  their  approbation  of  war,  by  the 
example  of  men  of  piety  of  our  own  times.  The 
argument,  as  an  argument,  is  of  little  concern ;  but 
every  thing  is  important  that  makes  us  acquiescent  in 
war.  Here  are  men,  say  they,  roho  make  the  knowledge 
of  their  duties  the  great  object  of  their  study,  and  yet 
these  men  engage  in  war  without  any  douht  of  its  lawful- 
ness.    All  this  is  true ;  and  it  is  true  also,  that  some 


81 

good  men  have  expressly  inculcated  the  lawfulness  of 
war ;  and  it  is  true  also,  that  the  articles  of  the  Church 
of  England  specifically  assert  it.  But  what,  if  it 
should  have  come  to  pass,  that  "  blindness  in  part» 
hath  happened  unto  Israel !" 

What  is  the  argument?  That  good  men  have  en 
gaged  in  war,  and  therefore  that  Christiamty  allows  it. 
They  who  satisfy  themselves  with  such  reasoning, 
should  bear  in  mind  that  he  who  voluntarily  passes 
over  the  practice  of  the  first  two  centuries  of  Christi- 
anity, and  attempts  to  defend  himself  by  the  practice  of 
after  and  darker  ages,  has  obviously  no  other  motive 
than  that  he  finds  his  religion,  when  vitiated  and  cor- 
rupt, more  suitable  to  his  purpose  than  it  was  in  the 
days  of  its  purity.  This  state  of  imperfection  and 
impurity  has  diflTused  an  influence  upon  the  good,  as 
upon  the  bad.  I  question  not  that  some  Christians  of 
the  present  day  who  defend  war,  believe  they  act  in 
accordance  with  their  religion ;  just  as  I  question  not 
that  many,  who  zealously  bore  fagots  to  the  stake  of 
the  Christian  martyrs,  believed  so  too.  The  time  has 
been,  when  those  who  killed  good  men  thought  "  they 
did  God  service."  But  let  the  succeeding  declaration 
be  applied  by  our  present  objectors,^ — "  These  things 
will  they  do  unto  you,  because  theij  have  not  known  the 
Father  nor  Me^^  Here,  then,  appears  to  be  our  error- — 
that  we  do  not  estimate  the  conduct  of  men  by  the 
standard  of  the  gospel,  but  that  we  reduce  the  stand- 
ard of  the  gospel  to  the  conduct  of  men.  That  good 
men  should  fail  to  conform  to  the  perfect  purity  of 
Christianity,  or  to  perceive  it,  need  not  be  wondered, 
for  we  have  sufficient  examples  of  it.  Good  men  in 
past  ages  allowed  many  things  as  permitted  by  Chris- 
tianity, which  we  condemn,  and  shall  for  ever  condemn 

*  John  xvi.  3. 


82 

In  the  present  day  there  are  many  questions  of  duty 
on  which  men  of  piety  disagree.  If  their  authority 
b3  rejected  by  us  on  other  points  of  practice,  why  is  it 
to  determine  the  question  of  war?  Especially  why  do 
we  insist  on  their  decisions,  when  they  differ  in  their 
decisions  themselves  ?  If  good  men  have  allowed  the 
lawfulness  of  war,  good  men  have  also  denied  it.  We 
are  therefore  again  referred  to  the  simple  evidence  of 
religion ;  an  evidence  which  it  will  always  be  found 
wise  to  admit,  and  dangerous  to  question. 

There  is,  however,  one  argument  brought  against 
us,  which  if  it  be  just,  precludes  at  once  all  question 
upon  the  subject : — That  a  distinction  is  to  he  made 
between  rules  which  apply  to  us  as  individuals,  and  rules 
which  apply  to  us  as  subjects  of  the  state  ;  and  that  the 
pacific  injunctions  of  Christ  from  the  mount,  and  all  the 
otlier  kindred  commands  and  prohibitions  of  the  Christ- 
ian  Scriptures,  have  no  reference  to  our  conduct  as  mem- 
bers of  the  political  body.  This  is  the  argument  to 
which  the  greatest  importance  is  attached  by  the 
advocates  of  war,  and  by  w^hich  thinking  men  are 
chiefly  induced  to  acquiesce  in  its  lawfulness.  In 
reality,  some  of  those  who  think  most  acutely  upon 
the  subject,  acknowledge  that  the  peaceable,  forbear- 
ing, forgiving  dispositions  of  Christianity,  are  abso- 
lutely obligatory  upon  individuals  in  their  full  extent : 
and  this  acknowledgment  I  would  entreat  the  reader  to 
bear  in  his  recollection. 

Now  it  is  obvious  that  the  proof  of  the  rectitude  of 
this  distinction,  must  be  expected  of  those  who  make 
it.  General  rules  are  laid  down  by  Christianity,  of 
w^hich,  in  some  cases,  the  advocate  of  war  denies  the 
applicability.  He,  therefore,  is  to  produce  the  reason 
and  the  authority  for  exception.  Now  we  would  re- 
mind him  that  general  rules  are  binding,  unless  their 


sa 

inapplicability  can  be  clearly  shown.  We  would 
remind  him  that  the  general  rules  in  question,  are  laid 
down  by  the  commissioned  ministers  of  Jesus  Christ, 
and  by  Jesus  Christ  himself;  and  we  would  recommend 
him,  therefore,  to  hesitate  before  he  institutes  excep- 
tions to  those  rules,  upon  any  authority  inferior  to  the 
authority  which  made  them. 

The  foundation  for  the  distinction  between  the  duties 
of  Individuals  and  those  of  Communities,  must,  we 
suppose,  be  sought  in  one  of  these  two  positions : 

1.  That  as  no  law  exists,  of  general  authority 
amongst  nations,  by  which  one  state  is  protected  from 
the  violence  of  another,  it  is  necessary  that  each  inde- 
pendent community  should  protect  itself;  and  that  the 
security  of  a  nation  cannot  sometimes  be  maintained 
otherwise  than  by  war. 

2.  That  as  the  general  utility  and  expediency  of 
actions  is  the  foundation  of  their  moral  qualities,  and 
as  it  is  sometimes  most  conducive  to  general  utility 
and  expediency  that  there  should  be  a  war,  war  is, 
therefore,  sometimes  lawful. 

The  first  of  these  positions  will  probably  be  thus 
enforced.  If  an  individual  suffers  aororression,  there  is 
a  Power  to  which  he  can  apply  that  is  above  himself 
and  above  the  aggressor;  a  power  by  which  the  bad 
passions  of  those  around  him  are  restrained,  or  by 
w^hich  their  aggressions  are  punished.  But  amongst 
nations  there  is  no  acknowledged  superior  or  common 
arbitrator. — Even  if  there  were,  there  is  no  way  in 
which  its  decisions  could  be  enforced,  but  by  the 
sword.  War,  therefore,  is  the  only  means  which  one 
nation  possesses  of  protecting  itself  from  the  aggres- 
sion of  another. 

This,  certainly,  is  plausible  reasoning ;  but  it  hap- 
pens  to  this  argument  as  to   many  others,   that    it 


84 

assumes  that  as  established,  which  has  not  been  proved, 
and  upon  the  proof  of  which  the  truth  of  the  whole  ar- 
gument depends.  It  assumes,  That  the  reason  why  an 
individual  is  not  permitted  to  use  violence,  is,  that  the 
laws  wiU  not  use  it  for  him.  And  in  this  the  fallacy  of  the 
position  consists  ;  for  the  foundation  of  the  duty  of  for- 
bearance in  private  life,  is  not  that  the  laws  will  punish 
aggression,  but  that  Christianity  requires  forbear ayice. 
Undoubtedly,  if  the  existence  of  a  common  arbitrator 
were  the  foundation  of  the  duty,  the  duty  would  not 
be  binding  upon  nations.  But  that  which  we  require 
to  be  proved  is  this — that  Christianity  exonerates 
nations  from  those  duties  which  she  has  imposed  upon 
individuals.  This,  the  present  argument  does  not 
prove ;  and,  in  truth,  with  a  singular  unhappiness  in 
its  application,  it  assumes,  in  effect,  that  she  has  im- 
posed these  duties  upon  neither  the  one  nor  the  other. 

If  it  be  said  that  Christianity  allows  to  individuals 
some  degree  and  kind  of  resistance,  and  that  some 
resistance  is  therefore  lawful  to  states,  we  do  not  deny  it. 
But  if  it  be  said  that  the  degree  of  lawful  resistance 
extends  to  the  slaughter  of  our  fellow  Christians — that 
it  extends  to  war — we  do  deny  it :  We  say  that  the 
rules  of  Christianity  cannot,  by  any  possible  latitude  of 
interpretation,  be  made  to  extend  to  it.  The  duty  of 
forbearance  then,  is  antecedent  to  all  considerations 
respecting  the  condition  of  man  ;  and  whether  he  be 
under  the  protection  of  laws  or  not,  the  duty  of  forbear- 
ance is  imposed. 

The  only  truth  which  appears  to  be  eUcited  by  the 
present  argument,  is,  that  the  difficulty  of  obeying  the 
forbearing  rules  of  Christianity,  is  greater  in  the  case 
of  nations  than  in  the  case  of  individuals  :  The  ohliga- 
tion  to  obey  them  is  the  same  in  both.  Nor  let  any 
one  urge  the  difficulty  of  obedience  in  opposition  to 


85 

the  duty  ;  for  he  who  does  this,  has  yet  to  learn  one  of 
the  most  awful  rules  of  his  religion — a  rule  that  was 
enforced  by  the  precepts,  and  more  especially  by  the 
final  example,  of  Christ,  of  apostles,  and  of  martyrs, 
the  rule  which  requires  that  we  should  be  "  obedient 
even  unto  death." 

Let  it  not,  however,  be  supposed  that  we  believe  the 
difficulty  of  forbearance  would  be  as  great  in  practice 
as  it  is  great  in  theory.  We  hope  hereafter  to  show 
that  it  promotes  our  interests  as  certainly  as  it  fulfils 
our  duties. 

The  rectitude  of  the  distinction  between  rules  which 
apply  to  individuals  and  rules  which  apply  to  states, 
is  thus  maintained  by  Dr.  Paley  on  the  principle  of 

EXPEDIENCY. 

''  The  on/y  distinction,"  says  he,  "  that  exists  between 
the  case  of  independent  states  and  independent  indivi- 
duals,  is  founded  in  this  circumstance;  that  the  particu- 
lar consequence  sometimes  appears  to  exceed  the  value 
of  the  general  rule;"  or,  in  less  technical  words,  that  a 
greater  disadvantage  may  arise  from  obeying  the  com- 
mands of  Christianity,  than  from  transgressing  them. 
Expediency,  it  is  said,  is  the  test  of  moral  rectitude,  and 
the  standard  of  our  duty.  If  we  believe  that  it  will  be 
most  expedient  to  disregard  the  general  obligations  of 
Christianity,  that  belief  is  the  justifying  motive  of  dis- 
regarding them.  Dr.  Paley  proceeds  to  say,  "  In  the 
transactions  of  private  persons,  no  advantage  that 
results  from  the  breach  of  a  general  law  of  justice,  can 
compensate  to  the  public  for  the  violation  of  the  law ; 
in  the  concerns  of  empire  this  may  sometimes  he  doiibtedy 
He  says  there  may  be  cases  in  which  "the  magnitude 
of  the  particular  evil  induces  us  to  call  in  question  the 
obligation  of  the  general  rule."  "  Situations  may  he 
feigned^  and  consequently  may  possihly  arise,  in  which 


86 

the  general  tendency  is  outweighed  by  the  enormity 
of  the  particular  mischief."  Of  the  doubts  which 
must  arise  as  to  the  occasions  when  the  "  obligation" 
of  Christian  laws  ceases,  he  however  says  that  "  moral 
philosophy  furnishes  no  precise  solution;"  and  he  can- 
didly acknowledges  "  the  danger  of  leaving  it  to  the 
sufferer  to  decide  upon  the  comparison  of  particular 
and  general  consequences,  and  the  still  greater  danger 
of  such  decisions  being  drawn  into  future  precedents. 
If  treaties,  for  instance,  be  no  longer  binding  than 
while  they  are  convenient,  or  until  the  inconveniency 
ascend  to  a  certain  point  (which  point  must  be  fixed 
by  the  judgment,  or  rather  by  the  feelings  of  the  com- 
plaining party), — one,  and  almost  the  only  method  of 
averting  or  closing  the  calamities  of  war,  of  preventing 
or  putting  a  stop  to  the  destrMction  of  mankind,  is  lost 
to  the  world  for  ever."  And  in  retrospect  of  the  inde- 
terminateness  of  these  rules  of  conduct,  he  says  finally, 
"these,  however,  are  the  principles  upon  which  the 
calculation  is  to  be  formed. "*^ 

It  is  obvious  that  this  reasoning  proceeds  upon  the 
principle  that  it  is  lawful  to  do  evil  that  good  may  come. 
If  good  will  come  by  violating  a  treaty,  we  may  violate 
it.f  If  good  will  come  by  slaughtering  other  men,  we 
may  slaughter  them.  I  know  that  the  advocate  of  ex- 
pediency will  tell  us  that  that  is  not  evil  of  which  good, 
in  the  aggregate,  comes ;  and  that  the  good  or  evil  of 
actions  consists  in  the  good  or  evil  of  their  general  con- 
sequences.— I  appeal  to  the  understanding  and  the 
conscience  of  the  reader — Is  this  distinction  honest  to 
the  meaning  of  the  apostle  ?  Did  he  intend  to  tell  his 
readers  that  they  might  violate  their  solemn  promises, 
that  they   might  destroy  their  fellow   Christians,   in 

*  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy,  Chap.  "  Of  War  and  Military  Es- 
tablishments." f  Ibid. 


87 

order  that  good  might  cornel  If  he  did  mean  this, 
surely  there  was  little  truth  in  the  declaration  of  the 
same  apostle,  that  he  used  great  plainness  of  speech. 

We  are  told  that  "  whatever  is  expedient  is  right." 
We  shall  not  quarrel  with  the  dogma,  but  how  is  ex- 
pediency to  be  determined  ?  By  the  calculations  and 
guessings  of  men,  or  by  the  knowledge  and  foresight 
of  God  ?  Expediency  may  be  the  test  of  our  duties, 
but  what  is  the  test  of  expediency  ? — Obviously,  I 
think,  it  is  this ;  the  decisions  rvhich  God  has  made 
knorvn  respecting  rvhat  is  best  for  man.  Calculations  of 
expediency,  of  ''  particular  and  general  consequences," 
are  not  intrusted  to  us,  for  this  most  satisfactory 
reason — that  we  cannot  make  them.  The  calculation, 
to  be  any  thing  better  than  vague  guessing,  requires 
prescience,  and  where  is  prescience  to  be  sought  ?  Now 
it  is  conceded  by  our  opponents,  that  the  only  posses- 
sor of  prescience  has  declared  that  the  forbearing,  non- 
resisting  character  is  best  for  man.  Yet  we  are  told, 
that  sometimes  it  is  not  best,  that  sometimes  it  is 
"inexpedient."  How  do  we  discover  this ?  The  pro- 
mulgator of  the  law  has  never  intimated  it.  Whence, 
then,  do  we  derive  the  right  of  substituting  our  compu- 
tations for  His  prescience  ?  Or,  having  obtained  it, 
what  is  the  limit  to  its  exercise?  If,  because  we 
calculate  that  obedience  will  not  be  beneficial,  we  may 
dispense  with  his  laws  in  one  instance,  why  may  we 
not  dispense  with  them  in  ten  ?  Why  may  we  not 
abrogate  them  altogether  ? 

The  right  is  however  claimed ;  and  how  is  it  to  be 
exercised  ?  We  are  told  that  the  duty  of  obedience 
*'may  sometimes  be  doubted'' — that  in  some  cases,  we 
are  induced  to  ''call  in  question''  the  obligation  of  the 
Christian  rule — that  ''^\i\xd.{io\i^  may  be  feigned'' — that 
circumstances    ''may  possibly  arise,''    in   which    we 


88 

are  at  liberty  to  dispense  with  it — that  still  it  is  dan- 
gerous to  leave  "it  to  the  sufferer  to  decide"  when  the 
obligation  of  the  rule  ceases ;  and  that  of  all  these 
doubts  "  philosophy  furnishes  no  precise  solution  !" — 
I  know  not  how  to  contend  against  such  principles  as 
these.  An  argument  might  be  repelled ;  the  assertion 
of  a  fact  might  be  disproved ;  but  what  answer 
can  be  made  to  "  possibilities"  and  "  doubts  ?"  They 
who  are  at  liberty  to  guess  that  Christian  laws  may 
sometimes  be  suspended,  are  at  liberty  to  guess  that 
Jupiter  is  a  fixed  star,  or  that  the  existence  of  Ame- 
rica is  a  fiction.  What  answer  the  man  of  science 
would  make  to  such  suppositions  I  do  not  know,  and  I 
do  not  know  what  answer  to  make  to  ours.  Amongst 
a  community  which  had  to  decide  on  the  "  particular 
and  general  consequences"  of  some  political  measure, 
which  involved  the  sacrifice  of  the  principles  of  Chris- 
tianity, there  would  of  necessity  be  an  endless  variety 
of  opinions.  Some  would  think  it  expedient  to  super- 
sede the  law  of  Christianity,  and  some  would  think  the 
evil  of  obeying  the  law  less  than  the  evil  of  transgress- 
ing it.  Some  would  think  that  the  "particular  mis- 
chief" outweighed  the  "general  rule,"  and  some  that 
the  "general  rule"  outweighed  the  "particular  mis- 
chief." And  in  this  chaos  of  opinion,  what  is  the  line 
of  rectitude,  or  how  is  it  to  be  discovered  ?  Or,  is  that 
rectitude,  which  appears  to  each  separate  individual  to 
be  right  ?  And  are  there  as  many  species  of  truth  as 
there  are  discordancies  of  opinion? — Is  this  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  gospel?  Is  this  the  path  in  which  a 
wayfaring  man,  though  a  fool,  shall  not  err? 

These  are  the  principles  of  expediency  on  which  it 
is  argued  that  the  duties  which  attach  to  private  life  do 
not  attach  to  citizens. — I  think  it  will  be  obvious  to 
the  eye  of  candour,  that  they  are  exceedingly  indeter- 


89 

minate  and  vague.  Little  more  appears  to  be  done  by 
Dr.  Paley  than  to  exhibit  their  doubtfulness.  In  truth, 
I  do  not  know  whether  he  has  argued  better  in  favour 
of  his  position,  or  against  it.  To  me  it  appears  that  he 
has  evinced  it  to  be  fallacious  ;  for  I  do  not  think  that 
any  thing  can  be  Christian  truth,  of  which  the  truth 
cannot  be  more  evidently  proved.  But  whatever  may 
be  thought  of  the  conclusion,  the  reader  will  certainly 
perceive  that  the  whole  question  is  involved  in  extreme 
vagueness  and  indecision:  an  indecision  and  vagueness, 
which  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  that  Christianity  ever 
intended  should  be  hung  over  the  very  greatest  question 
of  practical  morality  that  man  has  to  determine ;  over 
the  question  that  asks  whether  the  followers  of  Christ 
are  at  liberty  to  destroy  one  another.  That  such  a 
procedure  as  a  war  is,  under  any  circumstances,  sanc- 
tioned by  Christianity,  from  whose  principles  it  is 
acknowledged  to  be  "abhorrent,"  ought  to  be  clearly 
made  out.  It  ought  to  be  obvious  to  loose  examination. 
It  ought  not  to  be  necessary  to  ascertaining  it,  that  a 
critical  investigation  should  be  made,  of  questions 
which  ordinary  men  cannot  comprehend,  and  which, 
if  they  comprehended  them,  they  could  not  determine ; 
and  above  all,  that  investigation  ought  not  to  end,  as 
we  have  seen  it  does  end,  in  vague  indecision — in 
''doubts"  of  which  even  ''Philosophy  furnishes  no 
precise  solution."  But  when  this  indecision  and 
vagueness  are  brought  to  oppose  the  Christian  evidence 
for  peace;  when  it  is  contended,  not  only  that  it  mili- 
tates against  that  evidence,  but  that  it  outbalances  and 
supersedes  it — we  would  say  of  such  an  argument, 
that  it  is  not  only  weak,  but  idle;  of  such  a  conclusion, 
that  it  is  not  only  unsound,  but  preposterous. 

Christian  obligation  is  a  much  more  simple  thing 
than  speculative  philosophy  would  make  it  appear ; 
and  to  all  those  who  suppose  that  our  relations  as  sub- 

M 


90 

iects  dismiss  the  obligation  of  Christian  laws,  we  would 
offer  the  consideration,  that  neither  the  Founder  of 
Christianity  nor  his  apostles  ever  made  the  distinc- 
tion. Of  questions  of  "particular  and  general  conse- 
quences," of  ''general  advantages  and  particular  mis- 
chiefs," no  traces  are  to  be  found  in  their  words  or 
writings.  The  morality  of  Christianity  is  a  simple 
system,  adapted  to  the  comprehensions  of  ordinary 
men.  Were  it  otherwise,  what  would  be  its  useful- 
ness? If  philosophers  only  could  examine  our  duties, 
and  if  their  examinations  ended  in  doubts  without  solu- 
tion, how  would  men,  without  learning  and  without 
leisure,  regulate  their  conduct  ?  I  think,  indeed,  that 
it  is  a  sufficient  objection  to  all  such  theories  as  the 
present,  that  they  are  not  adapted  to  the  wayfaring 
man.  If  the  present  theory  be  admitted,  one  of  these 
two  effects  will  be  the  consequence :  the  greater  part 
of  the  community  must  trust  for  the  discovery  of  their 
duties  to  the  sagacity  of  others,  or  they  must  act  with- 
out any  knowledge  of  their  duties  at  all. 

But,  that  the  pacific  injunctions  of  the  Christian 
Scriptures  do  apply  to  as,  under  every  circumstance 
of  life,  whether  private  or  public,  appears  to  be  made 
necessary  by  the  universality  of  Christian  obligation. 
The  language  of  Christianity  upon  the  obligation  of 
her  moral  laws,  is  essentially  this,— ''What  I  say  unto 
you,  I  say  unto  all."  The  pacific  laws  of  our  religion, 
then,  are  binding  upon  all  men ;  upon  the  king  and 
upon  every  individual  who  advises  him,  upon  every 
member  of  a  legislature,  upon  every  officer  and  agent, 
and  upon  every  private  citizen.  How  then  can  that 
be  lawful  for  a  body  of  men  which  is  unlawful  for  each 
individual?  How  if  one  be  disobedient,  can  his 
offence  make  disobedience  lawful  to  all  ?  We  maintain 
yet  more,  and  say,  that  to  dismiss  Christian  benevo- 
lence as  subjects,  and  to  retain  it  as  individuals,   is 


91 

simply  impossible.  He  who  possesses  that  subjugation 
of  the  affections  and  that  universality  of  benevolence, 
by  v^^hich  he  is  influenced  to  do  good  to  those  w^ho  hate 
him,  and  to  love  his  enemies  in  private  life,  cannot, 
without  abandoning  those  dispositions,  butcher  other 
men  because  they  are  called  pubhc  enemies. 

The  w^hole  position,  therefore,  that  the  pacific  com- 
mands and  prohibitions  of  the  Christian  Scriptures  do 
not  apply  to  our  conduct  as  subjects  of  a  state,  appears 
to  me  to  be  a  fallacy.  Some  of  the  arguments  which 
are  brought  to  support  it,  so  flippantly  dispense  with 
the  principles  of  Christian  obligation,  so  gratuitously 
assume,  that  because  obedience  may  be  difficult,  obe- 
dience is  not  required,  that  they  are  rather  an  excuse 
for  the  distinction  than  a  justification  of  it — and  some 
are  so  lamentably  vague  and  indeterminate,  the  prin- 
ciples which  are  proposed  are  so  technical,  so  inappli- 
cable to  the  circumstance  of  society,  and  in  truth,  so 
incapable  of  being  practically  applied,  that  it  is  not 
credible  that  they  were  designed  to  suspend  the  obli- 
gation of  rules  which  were  imposed  by  a  revelation 
from  Heaven. 

The  reputation  of  Dr.  Paley  is  so  great,  that,  as  he 
has  devoted  a  chapter  of  the  Moral  Philosophy  to 
"  War  and  Military  Establishments,"  it  will  perhaps  be 
expected,  in  an  inquiry  like  the  present,  that  some 
specific  reference  should  be  made  to  his  opinions ;  and 
I  make  this  reference  willingly. 

The  chapter  "on  War"  begins  thus: — "Because 
the  Christian  Scriptures  describe  wars,  as  what  they 
are,  as  crimes  or  judgments,  some  men  have  been  led 
to  believe  that  it  is  unlawful  for  a  Christian  to  bear 
arms.  But  it  should  be  remembered,  that  it  may  be 
necessary  for  individuals  to  unite  their  force,  and  for 
this  end  to  resign  themselves  to  a  common  will;  and 
yet  it  may  be  true  that  that  will  is  often  actuated  by 

H2 


92 

criminal  motives,  and  often  determined  to  destructive 
purposes."  This  is  a  most  remarkable  paragraph  :  It 
assumes,  at  once,  the  whole  subject  of  inquiry,  and  is 
an  assumption  couched  in  extraordinary  laxity  of  lan- 
guage.— "  It  may  be  necessary  for  individuals  to  unite 
their  force."  The  tea-table  and  the  drawing-room 
have  often  told  us  this ;  but  philosophj  should  tell  us 
how  the  necessity  is  proved.  Nor  is  the  morality  of 
the  paragraph  more  rigid  than  the  philosophy, — "Wars 
are  crimes,"  and  are  often  undertaken  from  ''  criminal 
motives,  and  determined  to  destructive  purposes;"  yet 
of  these  purposes,  and  motives,  and  crimes,  "  it  may  be 
necessary"  for  Christians  to  become  the  abettors  and 
accomplices ! 

Paley  proceeds  to  say,  that  in  the  New  Testament 
the  profession  of  a  soldier^  is  nowhere  forbidden  or 
condemned;  and  he  refers  to  the  case  of  John  the  Bap- 
tist, of  the  Roman  centurion,  and  of  Cornehus;  and 
with  this  he  finishes  all  inquiry  into  the  Christian  evi- 
dence upon  the  subject,  after  having  expended  upon  it 
less  than  a  page  of  the  edition  before  me. 

These  arguments  are  all  derived  from  the  silence  of 
the  New  Testament,  and  to  all  reasoning  founded  upon 
this  silence,  no  one  can  give  a  better  answer  than  him- 
self In  replying  to  the  defences  by  which  the  advo- 
cates of  slavery  attempt  to  justify  it,  he  notices  that 
which  they  advance  from  the  silence  of  the  New 
Testament  respecting  it.  He  says — It  is  urged  that 
"  Slavery  was  a  part  of  the  civil  constitution  of  most 
countries  when    Christianity   appeared;  yet  that   no 

*  I  do  not  know  why  "  the  profession  of  a  soldier"  is  substituted  for  the 
simple  term,  war.  Dr.  P.  does  not  say  that  war  is  nowhere  forbidden  or 
condemned,  which  censure  or  prohibition  it  is  obviously  easy  to  have  pro- 
nounced without  even  noticing  "  the  profession  of  a  soldier."  I  do  not  say 
that  this  language  implies  a  want  of  ingenuousness,  but  it  certainly  was  more 
easy  to  prove  that  the  profession  of  a  soldier  is  nov/here  condemned,  than 
;hat  war  is  nowhere  condemned. 


93 

passage  is  to  be  found  in  the  Christian  Scriptures,  by 
which  it  is  condemned  or  prohibited."  ''This,"  he 
rejoins,  "  is  true  ;  for  Christianity,  soliciting  admission 
into  all  nations  of  the  world,  abstained,  as  behooved  it, 
from  intermeddling  with  the  civil  institutions  of  any. 
But  does  it  follow,  from  the  silence  of  Scripture  con- 
cerning them,  that  all  the  civil  institutions  vv^hich  then 
prevailed  were  right,  or  that  the  bad  should  not  be 
exchanged  for  better?"  I  beg  the  reader  to  apply  this 
reasoning  to  Paley's  own  arguments  in  favour  of  war 
from  the  silence  of  the  Scriptures.  How  happens  it 
that  he  did  not  remember  it  himself? 

Now  I  am  compelled  to  observe,  that  in  the  discus- 
sion of  the  lawfulness  of  war.  Dr.  Paley  has  neglected 
his  professed  principles  of  decision  and  his  ordinary 
practice.  His  professed  principles  are  these;  that 
the  discovery  of  the  "will  of  God,  which  is  the  whole 
business  of  morality,"  is  to  be  attained  by  referring, 
primarily,  to  ''  his  express  declarations  when  they  are  to 
be  had,  and  which  must  be  sought  for  in  Scripture." — 
Has  he  sought  for  these  declarations  ?  Has  he  sought 
for  "  Resist  not  evil,"  or  for  ''Love  your  enemies/'  or 
for  "  Put  up  thy  sword,"  or  for  "  The  weapons  of  our 
warfare  are  not  carnal,"  or  for  "  My  kingdom  is  not  of 
this  world  ?"  He  has  sought  for  none  of  these  ;  he  has 
examined  none  of  them.  He  has  noticed  none  of  them. 
His  professed  principles  are,  again,  that  7vhen  our 
instructions  are  dubious,  rve  should  endeavour  to  explain 
them  by  what  we  can  collect  of  our  Master's  general  incli- 
nation or  intentio?i.^  Has  he  conformed  to  his  own 
rule  ?  Has  he  endeavoured  to  collect  this  general 
inclination,  and  to  examine  this  general  tendency?  He 
has  taken  no  notice  of  it  whatever.  This  neglect,  we 
say,  is  contrary  to  his  ordinary  practice.  Upon  other 
subjects,  he  has  assiduously  applied  to  the  Christian 

*  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy,  Book  ii.  Chap.  4. 


94^ 

Scriptures  in  determination  of  truth.  He  has  examined 
not  only  their  direct  evidence,  but  the  evidence  v^hich 
they  aiford  by  induction  and  impKcation, — the  evidence 
arising  from  their  general  tendency.  Suicide  is  no- 
where condemned  in  the  New  Testament;  yet  Paley 
condemns  it,  and  how?  He  examines  the  sacred 
volume,  and  finds  that  by  implication  and  inference, 
it  may  be  collected  that  suicide  is  not  permitted  by 
Christianity.  He  says  that  patience  under  suffering  is 
inculcated  as  an  important  duty ;  and  that  the  recom- 
mendation of  patience,  implies  the  unlawfulness  of 
suicide  to  get  out  of  suffering.  This  is  sound  reasoning ; 
but  he  does  not  adopt  it  in  the  examination  of  war. 
Could  he  not  have  found  that  the  inculcation  of  peace- 
ableness  forms  as  good  an  argument  against  the  law- 
fulness of  war,  as  the  inculcation  of  patience  forms 
against  the  lawfulness  of  suicide  ?  He  certainly  could 
have  done  this,  and  why  has  he  not  done  it  ?  Why 
has  he  passed  it  over  in  silence? 

I  must  confess  my  belief,  that  he  was  unwilling  to 
discuss  the  subject  upon  Christian  principles ;  that  he 
had  resolved  to  make  war  consistent  with  Christianity  ; 
and  that,  foreseeing  her  "  express  declarations"  and 
''  general  intentions"  militated  against  it,  he  avoided 
noticing  them  at  all.  Thus  much  at  least  is  certain, 
that  in  discussing  the  lawfulness  of  war,  he  has  aban- 
doned both  his  avowed  principles  and  his  correspond- 
ent practice.  There  is,  to  me  at  least,  in  the  chapter 
"  On  War,"  an  appearance  of  great  indecision  of  mind, 
arising  from  the  conflict  between  Christian  truth  and 
the  power  of  habit, — between  the  consciousness  that 
war  is  "  abhorrent"  to  our  religion,  and  the  desire  to 
defend  it  on  the  principle  of  expediency.  The  whole 
chapter  is  characterized  by  a  very  extraordinary  laxity 
both  of  arguments  and  principles. 

After  the  defensibility  of  war  has  been  proved,  or 


95 

assumed,  in  the  manner  which  we  have  exhibited,  Dr. 
Paley  states  the  occasions  upon  which  he  determines 
that  wars  become  justifiable.  "  The  objects  of  just 
wars,"  says  he,  "are  precaution,  defence,  or  repara- 
tion."— ''  Every  just  war  supposes  an  injury  perpe- 
trated,  attempted,  or  feared." 

I  shall  acknowledge,  that  if  these  be  justifying 
motives  to  war,  I  see  very  little  purpose  in  talking  of 
morality  upon  the  subject.  It  w^as  wise  to  leave  the 
principles  of  Christianity  out  of  the  question,  and  to 
pass  them  by  unnoticed,  if  they  were  to  be  succeeded 
by  principles  like  these.  It  is  in  vain  to  expatiate  on 
moral  obligations,  if  we  are  at  liberty  to  declare  war 
whenever  an  "  injury  is  feared."  An  injury,  without 
limit  to  its  insignificance  !  A  fear,  without  stipulation 
for  its  reasonableness  !  The  judges,  also,  of  the  rea- 
sonableness of  fear,  are  to  be  they  who  are  under  its 
influence ;  and  who  so  likely  to  judge  amiss  as  those 
who  are  afraid?  Sounder  philosophy  than  this  has 
told  us,  that  "  he  who  has  to  reason  upon  his  duty 
when  the  temptation  to  transgress  it  is  before  him,  is 
almost  sure  to  reason  himself  into  an  error."  The 
necessity  for  this  ill-timed  reasoning,  and  the  allowance 
of  it,  is  amongst  the  capital  objections  to  the  philoso- 
phy of  Paley.  It  tells  us  that  a  people  may  suspend 
the  laws  of  God  when  they  think  it  is  "expedient;" 
and  they  are  to  judge  of  this  expediency  when  the 
temptation  to  transgression  is  before  them ! — Has 
Christianity  left  the  lawfulness  of  human  destruction 
to  be  determined  on  such  principles  as  these  ? 

Violence,  rapine,  and  ambition,  are  not  to  be 
restrained  by  morality  like  this.  It  may  serve  for  the 
speculation  of  a  study;  but  we  will  venture  to  affirm 
that  mankind  will  never  be  controlled  by  it.  Moral 
rules  are  useless,  if,  from  their  own  nature,  they  can- 
not be,  or  will  not  be  applied.     Who  believes  that  if 


96 

kings  and  conquerors  may  fight  when  they  have  fears, 
they  will  not  fight  when  they  have  them  not  ?  The 
morality  allows  too  much  latitude  to  the  passions,  to 
retain  any  practical  restraint  upon  them.  And  a  mo- 
rality that  will  not  be  practised,  I  had  almost  said,  that 
cannot  be  practised,  is  an  useless  morality.  It  is  a 
theory  of  morals.  We  want  clearer  and  more  exclu- 
sive rules;  we  want  more  obvious  and  immediate  sanc- 
tions. It  were  in  vain  for  a  philosopher  to  say  to  a 
general  who  was  burning  for  glory,  "  You  are  at  liberty 
to  engage  in  the  war  provided  you  have  suffered,  or 
fear  you  will  suffer  an  injury ;  otherwise  Christianity 
prohibits  it."  He  wdll  tell  him  of  twenty  injuries  that 
have  been  suffered,  of  a  hundred  that  have  been 
attempted,  and  of  ten  thousand  that  he  fears.  And 
what  answer  can  the  philosopher  make  to  him  ? 

I  think  that  Dr.  Paley  has,  in  another  and  a  later 
work,  given  us  stronger  arguments  in  favour  of  peace 
than  the  Moral  Philosophy  gives  in  favour  of  war.  In 
the  "  Evidences  of  Christianity"  we  find  these  state- 
ments : — "  The  tw^o  following  positions  appear  to  me 
to  be  satisfactorily  made  out :  first,  That  the  gospel 
omits  some  qualities,  which  have  usually  engaged  the 
praises  and  admiration  of  mankind,  but  which,  in 
reality,  and  in  their  general  effects,  have  been  preju- 
dicial to  human  happiness;  secondly,  that  the  gospel  has 
brought  forrvard  some  virtues,  which  possess  the  highest 
intrinsic  value,  but  which  have  commonly  been  over- 
looked and  condemned. — The  second  of  these  pro- 
positions is  exemplified  in  the  instances  of  passive 
courage  or  endurance  of  suffering,  patience  under 
affronts  and  injuries,  humility,  irresistence,  placability. 
— The  truth  is,  there  are  two  opposite  descriptions  of 
character  under  which  mankind  may  be  generally 
classed.  The  one  possesses  vigour,  firmness,  resolu- 
tion, is  daring  and  active,  quick  in  its  sensibilities, 


97 

jealous  in  its  fame,  eager  in  its  attachments,  inflexible 
in  its  purpose,  violent  in  its  resentments.  The  other 
meek,  yielding,  complying,  forgiving,  not  prompt  to 
act,  but  willing  to  suffer,  silent  and  gentle  under  rude- 
ness and  insult,  suing  for  reconciliation  where  others 
would  demand  satisfaction,  giving  way  to  the  pushes 
of  impudence,  conceding  and  indulgent  to  the  preju- 
dices, the  wrong-headed ness,  the  intractability  of  those 
with  whom  it  has  to  deal. — The  former  of  these  cha- 
racters is,  and  ever  hath  been,  the  favourite  of  the 
w^orld. — Yet  so  it  hath  happened,  that  with  the  Founder 
of  Christianity,  this  laMer  is  the  subject  of  his  commen- 
dation,  his  jweceptSj  his  example  ;  and  that  the  former  is 
so,  in  no  part  of  its  composition.  This  morality  shows, 
at  least,  that  no  two  things  can  he  more  different  than 
the  heroic  and  the  Christian  characters.  Now  it  is 
proved,  in  contradiction  to  first  impressions,  to  popular 
opinion,  to  the  encomiums  of  orators  and  poets,  and 
even  to  the  suffrages  of  historians  and  moralists,  that 
the  latter  character  possesses  most  of  true  worth,  both  as 
being  most  difficult  either  to  be  acquired  or  sustained, 
and  as  contributing  most  to  the  hapjoiness  and  tranquillitij 
of  social  life. — If  this  disposition  were  universal,  the 
case  is  clear ;  the  world  would  be  a  society  of  friends  : 
whereas,  if  the  other  disposition  were  universal,  it 
would  produce  a  scene  of  universal  contention.  The 
world  would  not  be  able  to  hold  a  generation  of  such 
men.  If,  what  is  the  fact,  the  disposition  be  partial;  if 
a  few  be  actuated  by  it  amongst  a  multitude  who  are 
not,  in  whatever  degree  it  does  prevail,  it  prevents^ 
allays,  and  terminates  quarrels,  the  great  disturbers  of 
human  happiness,  and  the  great  sources  of  human  misery, 
so  far  as  man's  happiness  and  misery  depend  upon 
man.  The  preference  of  the  patient  to  the  heroic  cha- 
racter, which  we  have  here  noticed,  is  a  peculiarity  in 

N 


98 

the  Christian  institution,  which  I  propose  as  a7i  argu- 
ment of  wisdom'''^ 

These  are  the  sentiments  of  Dr.  Paley  upon  this 
great  characteristic  of  the  Christian  morality.  I  think 
that  in  their  plain,  literal,  and  unsophisticated  meaning, 
they  exclude  the  possibility  of  the  lawfulness  of  war. 
The  simple  conclusion  from  them  is,  that  violence,  and 
devastation,  and  human  destruction  cannot  exist  in 
conjunction  with  the  character  of  a  Christian.  This 
would  be  the  conclusion  of  the  inhabitant  of  some  far  and 
peaceful  island,  where  war  and  Christianity  were  alike 
unknown.  If  he  read  these  definitions  of  the  Chris- 
tian duties,  and  were  afterwards  told  that  we  thought 
ourselves  allowed  to  plunder  and  to  murder  one 
another,  he  would  start  in  amazement  at  the  monstrous 
inconsistency.  Casuistry  may  make  her  "  distinc- 
tions," and  philosophy  may  talk  of  her  "expediencies," 
but  the  monstrous  inconsistency  remains.  What  is 
the  fact?  Mahometans  and  Pagans  do  not  believe 
that  our  religion  allows  of  war.  They  reproach  us 
with  the  inconsistency.  Our  wars  are,  with  them,  a 
scandal  and  a  taunt.  "  You  preach  to  us,"  say  they, 
*'  of  Christianity,  and  would  convert  us  to  your  creed  ; 
— first  convert  yourselves;  show  us  that  yourselves 
believe  in  it."     Nay,  the  Jews  at  our  own  doors  tell  us, 

*  I  must  be  just.  After  these  declarations,  the  author  says,  that  when 
the  laws  which  inculcate  the  Christian  character,  are  applied  to  what  is 
necessary  to  be  done  for  the  sake  of  the  public,  they  are  applied  to  a  case  to 
which  they  do  not  belong;  and  he  adds,  "  This  distinction  is  plain,"  but  in 
what  its  plainness  consists,  or  how  it  is  discovered  at  all,  he  does  not  inform 
us.  The  reader  will  probably  wonder,  as  I  do,  that  whilst  Paley  says  no 
two  things  can  be  more  opposite  than  the  Christian  and  the  heroic  charac- 
ters, he  nevertheless  thinks  it  "  is  plain"  that  Christianity  sanctions  the 
latter. 

I  would  take  the  opportunity  afforded  me  by  this  note,  to  entreat  the 
reader  to  look  over  the  whole  of  Chap.  2,  Part  II.  in  the  Evidences  of 
Christianity.  He  will  find  many  observations  on  the  placability  of  the 
gospel,  which  will  repay  the  time  of  reading  them. 


99 

that  our  wars  are  an  evidence  that  the  Prince  of 
Peace  is  not  come.  They  bring  the  violence  of  Chris- 
tians to  prove  that  Christ  w^s  a  deceiver.  Thus  do 
we  cause  the  way  of  truth  to  be  evil  spoken  of  Thus, 
are  we,  who  should  be  the  helpers  of  the  world,  its 
stumbling-blocks  and  its  shame.  We,  who  should  be 
lights  to  them  that  sit  in  darkness,  cause  them  to  love 
that  darkness  still.  Well  may  the  Christian  be 
ashamed  for  these  things  :  Well  may  he  be  ashamed 
for  the  reputation  of  his  religion  :  And  he  may  be 
ashamed  too,  for  the  honoured  defender  of  the  Christian 
faith  who  stands  up,  the  advocate  of  blood ;  who 
subtilizes  the  sophisms  of  the  schools,  and  roves  over 
the  fields  of  speculation  to  find  an  argument  to  con- 
vince us  that  we  may  murder  one  another  !  This  is 
the  ''  wisdom  of  the  world  ;"  that  wisdom  which  is, 
emphatically,  "  foolishness." 

We  have  seen  that  the  principle  on  which  Dr. 
Paley's  Moral  Philosophy  decides  that  war  is  lawful,  is, 
that  it  is  expedient.  I  know  not  how  this  argument 
accords  with  some  of  the  statements  of  the  Evidences 
of  Christianity.  We  are  there  told  that  the  non-resist- 
ing character  possesses  ^'  the  highest  intrinsic  value," 
and  the  ''  most  of  true  worth  ;"  that  it  "prevents  the 
great  disturbances  of  human  happiness,"  and  destroys 
"  the  great  sources  of  human  misery,"  and  that  it  *•  con- 
tributes most  to  the  happiness  and  tranquillity  of  social 
life."  And  in  what  then  does  expediency  consist,  if 
the  non-resisting  character  be  not  expedient?  Dr.  Paley 
says,  again,  in  relation  to  the  immense  mischief 
and  bloodshed  arising  from  the  violation  of  Christian 
duty — ''We  do  not  say  that  no  evil  can  exceed  this,  nor 
any  possible  advantage  compensate  it,  but  we  say  that 
a  loss  which  affects  all,  will  scarcely  he  made  up  to  the 
common  stock  of  human  happiness^  hy  any  henefit  that 
can  he  procured  to  a  single  nation''    And  is  not  there- 


100 

fore  the  violation  of  the  duty  inexjyedient  as  well  as 
criminal?  He  says  again  that  the  warlike  character 
*'  isy  in  its  general  effects, prejudicial  to  human  happiness,'' 
— and  therefore,  surely,  it  is  inexpedient. 

The  advocate  of  war,  in  the  abundance  of  his  topics 
of  defence  (or  in  the  penury  of  them)  has  had  recourse 
to  this: — That  as  a  greater  number  of  male  children  are 
brought  into  the  rvorld  than  of  female,  wars  are  the 
ordination  oj  Providence  to  rectify  the  inequality ;  and 
one  or  two  moralists  have  proceeded  a  step  farther,  and 
have  told  us,  not  that  war  is  designed  to  carry  off  the 
excess,  but  that  an  excess  is  horn  in  order  to  supply  its 
slaughters.  Dreadful !  Are  we  to  be  told  that  God 
sends  too  many  of  his  rational  creatures  into  the  world, 
and  therefore  that  he  stands  in  need  of  wars  to  destroy 
them  ?  Has  he  no  other  means  of  adjusting  the  pro- 
portions of  the  species,  than  by  a  system  which  violates 
the  revelation  that  he  has  made,  and  the  duties  that  he 
has  imposed?  Or,  yet  more  dreadful — are  we  to  be 
told  that  He  creates  an  excess  of  one  of  the  sexes,  on 
purpose  that  their  destruction  of  each  other  may  be 
with  impunity  to  the  species  ?  This  reasoning  surely 
is  sufficiently  confident : — I  fear  it  is  more  than 
sufficiently  profane.  But  alas  for  the  argument !  It 
happens  most  unfortunately  for  it,  that  although  more 
males  are  born  than  females,  yet  from  the  greater  mor- 
tality of  the  former,  it  is  found  that  long  before  the  race 
arrives  at  maturity,  the  number  of  females  predomi- 
nates. What  a  pity — that  just  as  the  young  men  had 
grown  old  enough  to  kill  one  another,  it  should  be 
discovered  that  there  are  not  too  many  to  remain 
peaceably  alive !  Let  then,  the  principle  be  retained 
and  acted  upon ;  and  since  we  have  now  an  excess  of 
females,  let  us  send  forth  an  armament  of  ladies  that 
their  redundance  may  be  lopped  by  the  appointed 
means. — But  reallj^  it  is  time  for  the  defender  of  war 


101 


to  abandon  reasoning  like  this.  It  argues  little  m 
favour  of  any  cause,  that  its  advocates  have  recourse  to 
such  deplorable  subterfuges. 

The  magistrate  "  beareth  not  the  sword  in  vain ; 
for  he  is  the  minister  of  God,  a  revenger  to  execute 
wrath  upon  him  that  doeth  evil."  From  this  acknow- 
ledgment of  the  lawfulness  of  coercion  on  the  part  of 
the  civil  magistrate,  an  argument  has  been  advanced 
in  favour  of  war.  It  is  said,  that  by  parity  of  reason- 
ing, coercion  is  also  lawful  in  the  suppression  of  the 
violence  which  one  nation  uses  towards  another. 

Some  men  talk  as  if  the  principles  which  we  main- 
tain were  subversive  of  all  order  and  government. 
They  ask  us — Is  the  civil  magistrate  to  stand  still  and 
see  lawless  violence  ravaging  the  land  ?  Is  the  whole 
fabric  of  human  society  to  be  dissolved  ?  We  answer, 
No;  and  that  whencesoever  these  men  may  have 
derived  their  terrors,  they  are  not  chargeable  upon  us 
or  upon  our  principles.  To  deduce  even  a  plausible 
argument  in  favour  of  war  from  the  permission  "to 
execute  wrath  upon  him  that  doeth  evil,"  it  is 
obviously  necessary  to  show  that  we  are  permitted  to 
take  his  life.  And  the  right  to  put  an  offender  to  death, 
must  be  proved,  if  it  can  be  proved  at  all,  either  from 
an  express  permission  of  the  Christian  Scriptures,  or, 
supposing  Christianity  to  have  given  no  decisions, 
either  directly  or  indirectly,  from  a  necessity  which 
hiows  no  alternative.  Now  every  one  knows  that  this 
express  permission  to  inflict  death  is  not  to  be  found; 
and,  upon  the  question  of  its  necessity,  we  ask  for  that 
evidence  which  alone  can  determine  it — the  evidence 
of  experience  :  and  this  evidence,  the  advocate  of  war 
has  never  brought,  and  cannot  bring.  And  we  shall 
probably  not  be  contradicted  when  we  say,  that  that 
degree  of  evidence  which  experience  has  afforded,  is  an 
evidence  in  our  favour  rather  than  agfainst  us. 


102 

But  some  persons  entertain  an  opinion,  that  in  the 
case  of  murder,  at  least,  there  is  a  sort  of  immutable 
necessity  tor  taking  the  offender's  life.  "  Whoso  shed- 
deth  man's  blood,  by  man  shall  his  blood  be  shed." 
If  any  one  urges  this  rule  against  us,  we  reply,  that  it 
IS  not  a  rule  of  Christianity ;  and  if  the  necessity  of 
demanding  blood  for  blood  is  an  everlasting  principle 
of  retributive  justice,  how  happens  it  that,  in  the  first 
case  in  which  murder  was  committed,  the  murderer 
was  not  put  to  death  1 

The  philosopher  however  would  prove  what  the 
Christian  cannot ;  and  Mably  accordingly  says,  "  In 
the  state  of  nature,  I  have  a  right  to  take  the  life  of 
him  who  lifts  his  arm  against  mine.  This  right,  upon 
entering  into  society,  I  surrender  to  the  magistrate.^'  If 
we  conceded  the  truth  of  the  first  position,  (which  we 
do  not,)  the  conclusion  from  it  is  a  sophism  too  idle  for 
notice.  Having,  however,  been  thus  told  that  the  state 
has  a  right  to  kill,  we  are  next  informed,  by  Filangieri, 
that  the  criminal  has  no  right  to  live.  He  says,  "  If  I 
have  a  right  to  kill  another  man,  he  has  lost  his  right  to 
life.''^  Rousseau  goes  a  little  farther.  He  tells  us, 
that  in  consequence  of  the  "social  contract"  which  we 
make  with  the  sovereign  on  entering  into  society, 
"  Life  is  a  conditional  grant  of  the  state  :"t  so  that  we 
hold  our  lives,  it  seems,  only  as  "  tenants  at  will,"  and 
must  give  them  up  whenever  their  owner,  the  state, 
requires  them.  The  reader  has  probably  hitherto 
thought  that  he  retained  his  head  by  some  other 
tenure. 

The  right  of  taking  an  offender's  life  being  thus 
proved,  Mably  shows  us  how  its  exercise  becomes 
expedient.  "  A  murderer,"  says  he,  "  in  taking  away 
his  enemy's  life,  believes  he  does  him  the  greatest  possible 
evil     Death,  then,  in  the  murderer's  estimation,  is  the 

♦  Montagu  on  Punishment  of  Death.         t  Contr.  Soc.  ii.  5.  Montagu. 


103 

greatest  of  evils.  B^  the  fear  of  death,  therefore,  +he 
excesses  of  hatred  and  revenge  must  be  restrained."  If 
language  wilder  than  this  can  be  held,  Rousseau,  I  think, 
holds  it.  He  says,  "  The  preservation  of  both  sides  (the 
criminal  and  the  state)  is  incompatible ;  one  of  the  two 
must  perish."  How  it  happens  that  a  nation  "must 
perish,"  if  a  convict  is  not  hanged,  the  reader,  I  suppose, 
will  not  know. 

I  have  referred  to  these  speculations  for  the  purpose 
of  showing,  that  the  right  of  putting  offenders  to  death  is 
not  easily  made  out.  Philosophers  would  scarcely  have 
had  recourse  to  these  metaphysical  abstractions  if  they 
knew  an  easier  method  of  establishing  the  right.  Even 
philosophy,  however,  concedes  us  much: — ''Absolute 
necessity,  alone,'^  says  Pastoret,  ''can  justify  the  punish- 
ment of  death ;"  and  Rousseau  himself  acknowledges, 
that,  "  we  have  no  right  to  put  to  death,  even  for  the  sahe 
of  example,  any  but  those  who  cannot  be  permitted  to 
live  without  danger."  Beccaria  limits  the  right  to  two 
specific  cases;  in  which,  "if  an  individual,  though  depriv- 
ed of  his  liberty,  has  still  such  credit  and  connexions  as 
may  endanger  the  security  of  the  nation,  or,  by  his  ex- 
istence, is  likely  to  produce  a  dangerous  revolution  in  the 
established  form  of  government — he  must  undoubtedly 
die."*  It  is  not,  perhaps,  necessary  for  us  to  point  out 
why,  in  these  suppositious  cases,  a  prisoner  may  not  be 
put  to  death ;  since  I  believe  that  philosophy  will  find  it 
difficult,  on  some  of  her  own  principles,  to  justify  his 
destruction :  For  Dr.  Paley  decides,  that  whenever  a 
man  thinks  there  are  great  grievances  in  the  existing 
government,  and  that,  by  heading  a  revolt,  he  can  redress 
them,  without  occasioning  greater  evil  by  the  rebellion 
than  benefit  by  its  success — it  is  his  duty  to  reheL\ 
The  prisoner  whom  Beccaria  supposes,  may  be  pre- 


12 


*  Del  Delitti  e  delia  Penes,  xvi.  Montagu, 
t  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy. 


104 

sumed  to  have  thought  this ;  and  with  reason  too,  for  the 
extent  of  his  credit,  his  connexions,  and  his  success,  is  the 
plea  for  putting  him  to  death ;  and  we  must  therefore 
leave  it  to  those  who  indulge  in  such  speculations,  to 
consider,  how  it  can  be  right  for  one  man  to  take  the  lead 
in  a  revolution,  whilst  it  is  right  for  another  to  hang  him 
for  taking  it. 

What  then  does  the  lawfulness  of  coercion  on  the  part 
of  the  magistrate  prove  upon  the  question  of  the  lawful- 
ness of  war  ?  If  capital  punishments  had  never  been  i?i- 
Jlicted,  what  would  it  have  proved  ?  Obviously  nothing. 
If  capital  punishments  cannot  he  shown  to  he  defensible, 
what  does  it  prove  ?  Obviously  nothing :  for  an  unautho- 
rized destruction  of  human  life  on  the  gallows,  cannot 
justify  another  unauthorized  destruction  of  it  on  the 
field. 

Perhaps  some  of  those  who  may  have  been  hitherto 
willing  to  give  me  a  patient  attention,  will  be  disposed  to 
withdraw  it,  when  they  hear  the  unlawfulness  of  defen- 
sive war  unequivocally  maintained.  But  it  matters  not. 
My  business  is  w^ith  what  appears  to  me  to  be  truth :  if 
truth  surprises  us,  I  cannot  help  it — still  it  is  truth. 

Upon  the  question  of  defensive  war,  I  would  beg  the 
reader  to  bear  in  his  recollection,  that  every  feeling  of 
his  nature  is  enlisted  against  us;  and  I  would  beg  him, 
knowing  this,  to  attain  as  complete  an  abstraction  from 
the  influence  of  those  feelings  as  shall  be  in  his  power. 
This  he  will  do,  if  he  is  honest  in  the  inquiry  for  truth. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  conceal  that  the  principles  w^hich 
we  maintain  may  sometimes  demand  the  sacrifice  of  our 
apparent  interests.  Such  sacrifices  Christianity  has 
been  wont  to  require  :  they  are  the  tests  of  our  fidelity ; 
and  of  those  whom  I  address,  I  believe  there  are  some, 
who,  if  they  can  be  assured  that  we  speak  the  language 
of  Christianity,  will  require  no  other  inducements  to 
obedience. 


105 

The  lawfulness  of  defensive  war  is  commonly  sim- 
plified to  The  Right  of  Self-defence.  This  is  one  of 
the  strongholds  of  the  defender  of  war,  the  almost  final 
fastness  to  which  he  retires.  The  instinct  of  self  preser- 
vation, it  is  said,  is  an  instinct  of  nature  ;  and  since  this 
instinct  is  implanted  hy  God,  whatever  is  necessary  to  self- 
preservation  is  accordant  with  his  will.  This  is  specious, 
but  like  many  other  specious  arguments,  it  is  sound  in 
its  premises,  but,  as  I  think,  fallacious  in  its  conclusions. 
That  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  is  an  instinct  of 
nature,  is  clear — that,  because  it  is  an  instinct  of  nature, 
we  have  a  right  to  kill  other  men,  is  not  clear. 

The  fallacy  of  the  whole  argument  appears  to  consist 
in  this, — that  it  assumes  that  an  instinct  of  nature  is  a 
law  of  paramount  authority.  God  has  implanted  in  the 
human  system  various  propensities  or  instincts, of  which 
the  purposes  are  wise.  These  propensities  tend  in  their 
own  nature  to  abuse;  and  when  gratified  or  followed  to 
excess,  they  become  subversive  of  the  purposes  of  the 
wisdom  which  implanted  them,  and  destructive  of  the 
welfare  of  mankind.  He  has  therefore  instituted  a 
superior  law,  sanctioned  by  his  immediate  authority  :  by 
this  law,  w^e  are  required  to  regulate  these  propensities. 
The  question  therefore  is,  not  whether  the  instinct  of 
self-preservation  is  implanted  by  nature,  but  whether 
Christianity  has  restricted  its  operation.  By  this,  and 
by  this  only,  the  question  is  to  be  determined.  Now  he 
who  will  be  at  the  trouble  of  making  the  inquiry,  will 
find  that  a  regulation  of  the  instincts  of  nature,  and  a 
restriction  of  their  exercise,  is  a  prominent  object  of  the 
Christian  morality;  and  I  think  it  is  plain  that  this 
regulation  and  restriction  apply  to  the  instinct  before 
us.  That  some  of  these  propensities  are  to  be  restrain- 
ed is  certain.  One  of  the  most  powerful  instincts  of 
oar  nature,  is  an  affection  to  which  the  regulating  pre- 
cepts of  Christianity  are  peculiarly  directed.     I  do  not 


106 

maintain  that  any  natural  instinct  is  to  be  eradicated,  but 
that  all  of  them  are  to  be  regulated  and  restrained ;  and 
I  maintain  this  of  the  instinct  of  self-preservation. 

The  establishment  of  this  position  is,  indeed,  the 
great  object  of  the  present  inquiry.  What  are  the 
dispositions  and  actions  to  which  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation  prompts,  but  actions  and  dispositions  which 
Christianity  forbids?  They  are  non-forbearance,  resist- 
ance, retaliation  of  injuries.  The  truth  is,  that  it  is  to 
defence  that  the  peaceable  precepts  of  Christianity  are 
directed.  Offence  appears  not  to  have  even  suggested 
itself  It  is  "  Resist  not  evil j'  it  is  "  Overcome  evil  with 
good;"  it  is  "Do  good  to  them  that  hate  you;"  it  is 
"  Love  your  enemies  f'  it  is  "  Render  not  evil  for  evilf 
it  is  "Whoso  S7niteth  thee  on  one  cheek'''  All  this  sup- 
poses previous  offence,  or  injury,  or  violence;  and  it 
is  then  that  forbearance  is  enjoined. 

"The  chief  aim,"  says  a  judicious  author,  "of  those 
who  argue  in  behalf  of  defensive  war,  is  directed  at  the 
passions  f'*  and  accordingly,  the  case  of  an  assassin  will 
doubtless  be  broug^ht  aorainst  me.  I  shall  be  asked — 
Suppose  a  ruffian  breaks  into  your  house,  and  rushes 
into  your  room  with  his  arm  lifted  to  murder  you,  do 
you  not  believe  that  Christianity  allows  you  to  kill  him? 
This  is  the  last  refuge  of  the  cause:  my  answer  to  it  is 
explicit — I  do  not  believe  it. 

I  have  referred  to  this  utmost  possible  extremity,  be- 
cause I  am  willing  to  meet  objections  of  whatever  nature, 
and  because,  by  stating  this,  which  is  enforced  by  all  our 
prejudices  and  all  our  instincts,  I  shall  at  least  show 
that  I  give  to  those  who  differ  from  me,  a  fair,  an  open, 
and  a  candid  recognition  of  all  the  consequences  of  my 
principles.  I  would,  however,  beg  the  same  candour 
of  the  reader,  and  remind  him,  that  were  they  unable  to 

*  "Tlie  Lawfulness  of  Defensive  War  impartially  considered,  by  a  Mem 
ber  of  the  Church  of  England." 


107 

abide  this  test,  the  case  of  the  ruffian  has  little  practical 
reference  to  war.      I  remind  him  of  this,  not  because  I 
doubt   whether   our  principles  can  be  supported,  but 
because,  if  he  should  think  that  in  this  case  I  do  not 
support  them,  he  will  yet  recollect  that  very  few  wars 
are  proved  to  be  lawful. — Of  the  wars  which  are  prose- 
cuted, some  are  simply  wars  of  aggression  ;  some  are  for 
the  maintenance  of  a  balance  of  power ;  some  are  in 
assertion  of  technical  rights,  and  some,  undoubtedly,  to 
repel  invasion.      The  last  are  perhaps  the  fewest;  and 
of  these  only  it  can  be  said  that  they  bear  any  analogy 
whatever  to  the  case  which  is  supposed;  and  even  in 
these,  the  analogy  is  seldom  complete.     It  has  rarely 
indeed  happened  that  wars  have  been  undertaken  sim- 
ply for  the  preservation  of  life,  and  that  no  other  alterna- 
tive has  remained  to  a  people,  than  to  kill  or  to  be  killed. 
And  let  it  be  remembered,  that  imless  this  alternative 
only  remains,  the  case  of  the  ruffian  is  irrelevant;  it  ap- 
plies not,  practically,  to  the  subject. 

I  do  not  know  what  those  persons  mean,  who  say, 
that  we  are  authorized  to  kill  an  assassin  by  the  law  of 
nature.  Principles  like  this,  heedlessly  assumed,  as  of 
self-evident  truth,  are,  I  believe,  often  the  starting-post 
of  our  errors,  the  point  of  divergency  from  rectitude, 
from  which  our  after  obliquities  proceed.  Some  men 
seem  to  talk  of  the  laws  of  nature,  as  if  nature  were  a 
leo^islatress  who  had  sat  and  framed  laws  for  the  o^overn 
ment  of  mankind.  Nature  makes  no  laws.  A  law 
implies  a  legislator;  and  there  is  no  legislator  upon 
the  principles  of  human  duty,  but  God.  If,  by  the  "law 
of  nature,"  is  meant  any  thing  of  which  the  sanctions 
or  obligations  are  different  from  those  of  revelation,  it 
is  obvious  that  we  have  set  up  a  moral  system  of  our 
own,  and  in  opposition  to  that  which  has  been  established 
by  Heaven.  If  we  mean  by  the  "law  of  nature," 
nothing  but  that  which  is  accordant  with  revelation, 


108 

to  what  purpose  do  we  refer  to  it  at  all  1  I  do  not  sup 
pose  that  any  sober  moralist  will  statedly  advance  the 
law^s  of  nature  in  opposition  to  the  laws  of  God ;  but  I 
think  that  to  advance  them  at  all — that  to  refer  to  a7i7j 
principle  or  law,  in  determination  of  our  duty,  irre- 
spectively of  the  simple  will  of  God,  is  always  dan- 
gerous: for  there  will  be  many,  w^ho,  when  they  are 
referred  for  direction  to  such  law  or  principle,  will 
regard  it,  in  their  practice,  as  a  fi?ial  standard  of  truth 
I  believe  that  a  reference  to  the  laws  of  nature  has 
seldom  illustrated  our  duties,  and  never  induced  us  to 
perform  them;  and  that  it  has  hitherto  answered  little 
other  purpose  than  that  of  amusing  the  lovers  of  philo- 
sophical morality. 

The  mode  of  proving,  or  of  stating,  the  right  to  kill 
an  assassin,  is  this: — "There  is  one  case  in  which  all 
extremities  are  justifiable;  namely,  when  our  life  is  as- 
saulted, and  it  becomes  necessary  for  our  preservation  to 
kill  the  assailant.  This  is  evident  in  a  state  of  nature ; 
unless  it  can  be  shown  that  we  are  bound  to  prefer  the 
aggressor's  life  to  our  own;  that  is  to  say,  to  love  our 
enemy  better  than  ourselves,  which  can  never  be  a  debt 
of  justice,  nor  any  where  appears  to  be  a  duty  of  cha- 
rity."* If  I  were  disposed  to  hold  argumentation  like 
this,  I  would  say,  that  although  we  may  not  be  required 
to  love  our  enemies  better  than  ourselves,  we  are  requir- 
ed to  love  them  as  ourselves ;  and  that  in  the  supposed 
case,  it  still  would  be  a  question  equally  balanced, 
w^hich  life  ought  to  be  sacrificed ;  for  it  is  quite  clear,  that 
if  we  kill  the  assailant,  we  love  him  less  than  ourselves, 
which  may,  perhaps,  militate  a  little  against  "a  duty 
of  charity."  But  the  truth  is,  that  the  question  is  not 
whether  w^e  should  love  our  enemy  better  than  our- 
selves, but  w^h ether  we  should  sacrifice  the  laws  of 
Christianity  in  order  to  preserve  our  lives — whether  we 

*  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy. 


109 

should  prefer  the  interests  of  religion  to  our  own — • 
whether  we  should  be  willing  to  "lose  our  life,  for 
Christ's  sake  and  the  gospel's." 

This  system  of  counter-crime  is  of  very  loose  tendency. 
The  assailant  violates  his  duties  by  attempting  to  kill 
me,  and  I,  therefore,  am  to  violate  mine  by  actually  kill- 
ing him.  Is  his  meditated  crime,  then,  a  justification 
of  my  perpetrated  crime?  In  the  case  of  a  condemned 
Christian  martyr  who  was  about  to  be  led  to  the  stake, 
it  is  supposable,  that  by  having  contrived  a  mine,  he 
may  preserve  his  life  by  suddenly  firing  it  and  blowing 
his  persecutors  into  the  air.  Would  Christianity  justify 
the  act?  Or  what  should  we  say  of  him  if  he  commit- 
ted it?  We  should  say  that  whatever  hi^  faith  might  be, 
his  practice  w^as  very  unsound;  that  he  might  believe 
the  gospel,  but  that  he  certainly  did  not  fulfil  its  duties. 
Now  I  contend  that  for  all  the  purposes  of  the  argu- 
ment, the  cases  of  the  martyr  and  the  assaulted  person 
are  precisely  similar.  He  who  was  about  to  be  led  to 
the  stake,  and  he  who  was  about  to  lose  his  life  by  the 
assassin,  are  both  required  to  regulate  their  conduct  by 
the  same  laws,  and  are  both  to  be  prepared  to  offer  up 
their  lives  in  testimony  of  their  allegiance  to  Christian- 
ity :  the  one  in  allegiance  to  her,  in  opposition  to  the 
violation  of  her  moral  principles  and  her  moral  spirit; 
and  the  other,  in  opposition  to  errors  in  belief  or  to 
ecclesiastical  corruptions.  It  is  therefore  in  vain  to  tell 
me  that  the  victim  of  persecution  would  have  suffered 
for  religion's  sake,  for  so  also  would  the  victim  of  the 
ruffian.  There  is  nothing,  in  the  sanctions  of  Christian- 
ity which  implies  that  obedience  to  her  moral  law  is 
of  less  consequence  than  an  adherence  to  her  faith ;  nor, 
as  it  respects  the  welfare  of  the  world,  does  the  conse- 
quence appear  to  be  less;  for  he  who,  by  his  fidelity  to 
Christianity,  promotes  the  diffusion  of  Christian  dis- 
positions and  of  peace,  contributes,  perhaps^  as  much 


110 

to  the  happiness  of  mankind,  as  he  who  by  the  same 
fidelity  recommends  the  acceptance  of  an  accurate  creed. 

A  orreat  deal  hangs  upon  this  question,  and  it  is  there- 
fore necessary  to  pursue  it  farther.  We  say,  then,  first 
— that  Christianity  has  not  declared  that  we  are  e\er  at 
liberty  to  kill  other  men:  secondly — that  she  virtually 
prohibits  it,  because  her  principles  and  the  practice  of 
our  Saviour  are  not  compatible  with  it :  and,  thirdly — 
that  if  Christianity  allowed  it,  she  would  in  effect  and 
in  practice  allow  war,  without  restriction  to  defence  of 
life. 

The  first  of  these  positions  will  probably  not  be  dis- 
puted ;  and  upon  the  second,  that  Christianity  virtually 
prohibits  the  destruction  of  human  life,  it  has  been  the 
principal  object  of  this  essay  to  insist.  I  would,  there- 
fore, only  observe,  that  the  conduct  of  the  Founder 
of  Christianity,  when  his  enemies  approached  him  ''wiih 
swords  and  staves^  appears  to  apply  strictly  to  self- 
defence.  These  armed  men  came  with  the  final  purpose 
of  murdering  him ;  but  although  he  knew  this  purpose, 
he  would  not  suffer  the  assailants  to  be  killed  or  even 
to  be  wounded.  Christ,  therefore,  would  not  preserve 
his  own  life  by  sacrificing  another's. 

But  we  say,  thirdly,  that  if  Christianity  allows  us  to 
kill  one  another  in  self-defence,  she  allows  war,  without 
restriction  to  self-defence.  Let  us  try  what  would  have 
been  the  res^ult  if  the  Christian  Scriptures  had  thus 
placed  human  life  at  our  disposal :  suppose  they  had  said 
— You  may  Mil  a  ruffian  inyour  own  defence,  hut  you  may 
not  enter  into  a  defensive  war.  The  prohibition  would 
admit,  not  of  some  exceptions  to  its  application — the 
exceptions  would  be  so  many,  that  no  prohibition  would 
be  left ;  because  there  is  no  practical  limit  to  the  right 
of  self-defence,  until  we  arrive  at  defensive  war.  If 
one  man  may  kill  one,  two  may  kill  two,  and  ten  may 
kill  ten,  and  an  army  may  kill  an  army  : — and  this  is 


Ill 

defensive  war.  Supposing,  again,  the  Christian  Scrip 
tares  had  said,  an  army  may  figlit  in  its  own  defence^  hut 
not  for  any  other  purpose.  We  do  not  say  that  the  ex- 
ceptions to  this  rule  would  be  so  many  as  wholly  to  nul- 
lify the  rule  itself;  but  we  say  that  whoever  will  attempt 
to  apply  it  in  practice,  will  find  that  he  has  a  very  wide 
range  of  justi*fiable  warfare;  a  range  that  will  embrace 
many  more  wars  than  moralists,  laxer  than  we  shall 
suppose  him  to  be,  are  willing  to  defend.  If  an  army 
may  fight  in  defence  of  their  own  lives,  they  may  and 
they  must  fight  in  defence  of  the  lives  of  others :  if 
they  may  fight  in  defence  of  the  lives  of  others,  they 
will  fight  in  defence  of  their  property:  if  in  defence 
of  property,  they  will  fight  in  defence  of  political 
rights:  if  in  defence  of  rights,  they  will  fight  in  pro- 
motion of  interests :  if  in  promotion  of  interests,  they 
will  fight  in  promotion  of  their  glory  and  their  crimes. 
Now  let  any  man  of  honesty  look  over  the  gradations 
by  which  we  arrive  at  this  climax,  and  I  believe  he  will 
find  that,  in  practice^  no  curb  can  be  placed  upon  the 
conduct  of  an  army  until  they  reach  it.  There  is, 
indeed,  a  wide  distance  betw^een  fighting  in  defence 
of  life  and  fio^htinor  in  furtherance  of  our  crimes;  but 
the  steps  which  lead  from  one  to  the  other  will  follow 
in  inevitable  succession.  I  know  that  the  letter  of  our 
rule  excludes  it,  bat  I  know  the  rule  will  be  a  letter 
only.  It  is  very  easy  for  us  to  sit  in  our  studies,  and  to 
point  the  commas,  and  semicolons,  and  periods  of  the 
soldier's  career;  it  is  very  easy  for  us  to  say  he  shall 
stop  at  defence  of  life,  or  at  protection  of  property, 
or  at  the  support  of  rights ;  but  armies  will  never  listen 
to  us — we  shall  be  only  the  Xerxes  of  morality  throw- 
ing our  idle  chains  into  the  tempestuous  ocean  of 
slaughter . 

What  is  the  testimony  of  experience  ?  When  nations 

are  mutually  exasperated,  and  armies  are  levied,  and 
K 


112 

battles  are  fought,  does  not  every  one  know  that  with 
whatever  motives  of  defence  one  party  may  have  begun 
the  contest,  both,  in  turn,  become  aggressors?  In  the 
fury  of  slaughter,  soldiers  do  not  attend,  they  cannot 
attend,  to  questions  of  aggression.  Their  business  is 
destruction,  and  their  business  they  will  perform.  If 
the  army  of  defence  obtains  success,  it  soon  becomes  an 
army  of  aggression.  Having  repelled  the  invader,  it 
begins  to  punish  him.  If  a  war  is  once  begun,  it  is  vain 
to  think  of  distinctions  of  aggression  and  defence.  Mo- 
ralists may  talk  of  distinctions,  but  soldiers  will  make 
none;  and  none  can  be  made ;  it  is  without  the  limits  of 
possibility. 

But,  indeed,  what  is  defensive  war?  A  celebrated 
moralist  defines  it  to  be,  war  undertaken  in  conse- 
quence of ''an  injury  perpetrated,  attempted,  or  feared ;" 
which  shows  with  sufficient  clearness  how  little  the 
assassin  concerns  the  question,  for  fear  respecting  life 
does  not  enter  into  the  calculation  of  "injuries."  So, 
then,  if  we  fear  some  injury  to  our  purses,  or  to  our 
''honour,"  we  are  allowed  to  send  an  army  to  the  coun- 
try that  gives  us  fear,  and  to  slaughter  its  inhabitants ; 
and  this,  we  are  told,  is  defensive  war.  By  this  system 
of  reasoning,  which  has  been  happily  called  "martial 
logic,"  there  will  be  little  difficulty  in  proving  any  war 
to  be  defensive.  Now  we  say  that  if  Christianity 
allows  defensive  war,  she  allows  all  war — except  indeed 
that  of  simple  aggression ;  and  by  the  rules  of  this 
morality,  the  aggressor  is  difficult  of  discovery ;  for  he 
whom  we  choose  to  "fear"  may  say  that  he  had 
previous  "fear"  of  us,  and  that  his  "fear"  prompted  the 
hostile  symptoms  which  made  us  "fear"  again.  The 
truth  is,  that  to  attempt  to  make  any  distinctions  upon 
the  subject  is  vain.  War  must  be  wholly  forbidden,  or 
allowed  without  restriction  to  defence;  for  no  definitions 
of  lawful  or  unlawful  war  will  be,  or  can  be,  attended 


113 

to.  If  the  principles  of  Christianity,  in  any  case,  or 
for  any  purpose,  allow  armies  to  meet  and  to  slaughter 
one  another,  her  principles  will  never  conduct  us  to  the 
period  which  prophecy  has  assured  us  they  shall 
produce.  There  is  no  hope  of  an  eradication  of  war 
but  by  an  absolute  and  total  abandonment  of  it.* 

What  then  is  the  principle  for  which  we  contend? 
An  unreasoniiig  reliance  upon  Providence  for  defence,  in 
all  those  cases  in  rvhich  we  should  violate  his  laws  hy 
defending  ourselves.  The  principle  can  claim  a  species 
of  merit,  which  must  at  least  be  denied  to  some  systems 
of  morality- — that  of  simplicity,  of  easiness  of  appre- 
hension, of  adaptation  to  every  understanding,  of  appli- 
cability to  every  circumstance  of  life. 

If  a  wisdom  which  we  acknowledge  to  be  unerring, 
has  determined  and  declared  that  any  given  conduct 
is  right,  and  that  it  is  good  for  man,  it  appears  prepos- 
terous and  irreverent  to  argue  that  another  can  be 
better.  The  Almighty  certainly  knows  our  interests, 
and  if  he  has  not  directed  us  in  the  path  which  pro- 
motes them,  the  conclusion  is  inevitable,  that  he  has 
voluntarily  directed  us  amiss. — Will  the  advocate  of 
war  abide  this  conclusion?  And  if  he  will  not,  how 
will  he  avoid  the  opposite  conclusion,  that  the  path 
of  forbearance  is  the  path  of  expediency  ? 

It  would  seem  to  be  a  position  of  very  simple  truth, 
that  it  becomes  an  erring  being  to  regulate  his  actions 
by  an  acquiescent  reference  to  an  unerring  will.  That 
it  is  necessary  for  one  of  these  erring  beings,  formally 

*  It  forms  no  part  of  a  Christian's  business  to  inquire  why  his  religion  for- 
bids any  given  actions,  although  I  know  not  that  the  inquiry  is  reprehensible. 
In  the  case  of  personal  attack,  possibly  Christianity  may  decide,  that  if  one 
of  two  men  must  be  hurried  from  the  world,  of  whom  the  first  is  so  profligate 
as  to  assault  the  life  of  his  fellow,  and  the  other  is  so  virtuous  as  to  prefer  the 
loss  of  life  to  the  abandonment  of  Christian  principles — it  is  more  consistent 
with  her  will  that  the  good  should  be  transferred  to  his  hoped  felicity,  than 
that  the  bad  should  be  consigned  to  punishment. 

O  i  p 


114 

to  insist  upon  this  truth,  and  systematically  to  prove 
It  to  his  fellows,  may  reasonably  be  a  subject  of  grief 
and  of  shame.  But  the  hardihood  of  guilt  denies  the 
truth,  and  the  speculativeness  of  philosophy  practically 
supersedes  it ; — and  the  necessity  therefore  remains. 

We  have  seen  that  the  duties  of  the  reliction  which 
God  has  imparted  to  mankind  require  irresistance;  and 
surely  it  is  reasonable  to  believe,  even  without  a  re- 
ference to  experience,  that  he  will  make  our  irre- 
sistance subservient  to  our  interests — that  if,  for  the 
purpose  of  conforming  to  his  will,  w^e  subject  ourselves 
to  difficulty  or  danger,  he  w^ill  protect  us  in  our  obe- 
dience, and  direct  it  to  our  benefit — that  if  he  requires 
us  not  to  be  concerned  in  war,  he  will  preserve  us  in 
peace — that  he  will  not  desert  those  w^ho  have  no  other 
protection,  and  who  have  abandoned  all  other  protec- 
tion because  they  confide  in  his  alone. 

And  if  w^e  refer  to  experience,  we  shall  find  that  the 
reasonableness  of  this  confidence  is  confirmed.  There 
have  been  thousands  who  have  confided  in  Heaven  in 
opposition  to  all  their  apparent  interests,  but  of  these 
thousands  has  one  eventually  said  that  he  repented 
his  confidence,  or  that  he  reposed  in  vain? — ''He  that 
will  lose  his  life  for  my  sake  and  the  gospel's,  the  same 
shall  find  it."  If  it  be  said  that  we  take  futurity 
into  the  calculation,  in  our  estimate  of  interest,  I 
answer — So  we  ought.  Who  is  the  man  that  w^ould 
exclude  futurity ;  or  what  are  his  principles  ?  I  do  not 
comprehend  the  foundation  of  those  objections  to  a 
reference  to  futurity  which  are  thus  flippantly  made. 
Are  we  not  immortal  beings  ?  Have  w^e  not  interests 
beyond  the  present  life?  It  is  a  deplorable  tempei 
of  mind,  which  would  diminish  the  frequency,  or  the 
influence,  of  our  references  to  futurity.  The  prospects 
of  the  future  ought  to  predominate  over  the  sensation 
of  the  present.     And  if  the  attainment  of  this  preda 


115 

minance  be  difficult,  let  us  at  least,  not  voluntarily, 
argumentatively,  persuade  ourselves  to  forego  the  pros- 
pect, or  to  diminish  its  influence. 

Yet,  even  in  reference  only  to  the  present  state  of 
existence,  I  believe  we  shall  find  that  the  testimony 
of  experience  is,  that  forbearance  is  most  conducive  to 
our  interests. 

Integer  vitae  scelerisque  purus 
Non  eget  Mauri  jaculis  neque  arcu, 
Nee  venenatis  gravida  sagittis, 

Fusee,  pharetra. 

Horace. 

And  the  same  truth  is  delivered  by  much  higher  au- 
thority than  that  of  Horace,  and  iu  much  stronger 
language: — ''If  a  man's  ways  please  the  Lord,  he 
maketh  even  his  enemies  to  he  at  peace  rvith  him'' 

The  reader  of  American  history  will  recollect  that 
in  the  beginning  of  the  last  century,  a  desultory  and 
most  dreadful  warfare  was  carried  on  by  the  natives 
against  the  European  settlers ;  a  warfare  that  was  pro- 
voked, as  such  warfare  has  almost  always  originally 
been,  by  the  injuries  and  violence  of  the  Christians. 
The  mode  of  destruction  was  secret  and  sudden.  The 
barbarians  sometimes  lay  in  wait  for  those  who  might 
come  within  their  reach  on  the  highway  or  in  the 
fields,  and  shot  them  without  warning ;  and  sometimes 
they  attacked  the  Europeans  in  their  houses,  "scalping 
some,  and  knocking  out  the  brains  of  others."  From 
this  horrible  warfare,  the  inhabitants  sought  safety 
by  abandoning  their  homes,  and  retiring  to  fortified 
places,  or  to  the  neighbourhood  of  garrisons;  and  those 
whom  necessity  still  compelled  to  pass  beyond  the 
limits  of  such  protection,  provided  themselves  with 
arms  for  their  defence.  But  amidst  this  dreadful  deso- 
xation  and  universal  terror,  the  Society  of  Frie?ids,  who 

were  a  considerable  proportion  of  the  whole  population, 
K2 


116 

were  steadfast  to  their  principles.  They  would  neither 
retire  to  garrisons,  nor  provide  themselves  with  arms. 
They  remained  openly  in  the  country,  whilst  the  rest 
were  flying  to  the  forts.  They  still  pursued  their  occu- 
pations in  the  fields  or  at  their  homes,  without  a  weapon 
either  for  annoyance  or  defence.  And  what  was  their 
fate?  They  lived  in  security  and  quiet.  The  habitation, 
which,  to  his  armed  neighbour,  was  the  scene  of 
murder  and  of  the  scalping  knife,  was  to  the  unarmed 
Quaker  a  place  of  safety  and  of  peace. 

Three  of  the  Society  were  however  killed.  And 
who  were  they?  They  were  three  who  abandoned 
their  principles.  Two  of  these  victims  were  men,  who, 
in  the  simple  language  of  the  narrator,  "  used  to  go 
to  their  labour  without  any  weapons,  and  trusted  to  the 
Almighty,  and  depended  on  his  providence  to  protect 
them  (it  being  their  principle  not  to  use  weapons  of 
war  to  offend  others  or  to  defend  themselves):  but  a 
spirit  of  distrust  taking  place  in  their  minds,  they  took 
weapons  of  war  to  defend  themselves,  and  the  Indians, 
who  had  seen  them  several  times  without  them  and  let 
them  alone,  saying  they  were  peaceable  men  and  hurt 
nobody,  therefore  they  would  not  hurt  them, — now 
seeing  them  have  guns,  and  supposing  they  designed  to 
kill  the  Indians,  they  therefore  shot  the  men  dead." 
The  third  whose  life  was  sacrificed  was  a  woman,  who 
*'  had  remained  in  her  habitation,"  not  thinking  her- 
self warranted  in  going  ''  to  a  fortified  place  for  pre- 
servation, neither  she,  her  son,  nor  daughter,  nor  to  take 
thither  the  little  ones;  but  the  poor  woman  after  some 
time  began  to  let  in  a  slavish  fear,  and  advised  her 
children  to  go  with  her  to  a  fort  not  far  from  their 
dwelling."  She  went; — and  shortly  afterwards  *'the 
bloody,  cruel  Indians  lay  by  the  way,  and  killed  her."* 

*  See  "  Select  Anecdotes,  &c.,  by  John  Barclay,"  pp.  71—79.    In  this  little 
volume  I  have  found  some  illustrations  of  the  policy  of  the  principle  which 


117 

The  fate  of  the  Quakers  during  the  rebelKoa  in 
Ireland  was  nearly  similar.  It  is  well  known  that  the 
rebellion  was  a  time  not  only  of  open  war  but  of  cold- 
blooded murder ;  of  the  utmost  fury  of  bigotry,  and  the 
utmost  exasperation  of  revenge.  Yet  the  Quakers 
were  preserved  even  to  a  proverb;  and  when  strangers 
passed  through  streets  of  ruin,  and  observed  a  house 
standing  uninjured  and  alone,  they  would  sometimes 
point,  and  say — ''That,  doubtless,  was  the  house  of  a 
Quaker." 

It  were  to  no  purpose  to  say,  in  opposition  to  the 
evidence  of  these  facts,  that  they  form  an  exception  to 
a  general  rule.  The  exception  to  the  rule  consists  in 
the  trial  of  the  experiment  of  non-resistance,  not  in  its 
success.  Neither  were  it  to  any  purpose  to  say,  that 
the  savages  of  America  or  the  desperadoes  of  Ireland 
spared  the  Quakers  because  they  were  previouslij 
known  to  be  an  unoffending  people,  or  because  the 
Quakers  had  previously  gained  the  love  of  these  by  for- 
bearance or  good  offices : — we  concede  all  this :  it  is  the 
very  argument  which  we  maintain.  We  say  that  a 
uniform,  undemating  regard  to  the  peaceable  obligations 
of  Christianity,  hecomes  the  safeguard  of  those  who 
practise  it.  We  venture  to  maintain  that  no  reason 
whatever  can  be  assigned  why  the  fate  of  the  Quakers 
would  not  be  the  fate  of  all  vfho  should  adopt  their 
conduct.  No  reason  can  be  assigned  why,  if  their 
number  had  been  multiplied  ten-fold  or  a  hundred-fold, 

we  maintain  in  the  case  of  a  personal  attack.  Barclay,  the  celebrated  Apo- 
logist, was  attacked  by  a  highwayman.  He  made  no  other  resistance  than  a 
calm  expostulation.  The  felon  dropped  his  presented  pistol,  and  offered  no 
farther  violence.  A  Leonard  Fell  was  assaulted  by  a  highway  robber,  who 
plundered  him  of  his  money  and  his  horse,  and  afterwards  threatened  to  blow 
out  his  brains.  Fell  solemnly  spoke  to  the  robber  on  the  wickedness  of  his 
life.  The  man  was  astonished: — he  declared  he  would  take  neither  his 
money  nor  his  horse,  and  returned  them  both. — "  If  thine  enemy  bungler.  fee4 
him, — for  in  so  doingthou  shall  heap  coals  of  fire  upon  his  head." 


118 

they  would  not  have  been  preserved.  If  there  be  such 
a  reason,  let  us  hear  it.  The  American  and  Irish 
Quakers  were,  to  the  rest  of  the  community,  what  one 
nation  is  to  a  continent.  And  we  must  require  the 
advocate  of  war  to  produce  (that  which  has  never  yet 
been  produced)  a  reason  for  believing  that,  although 
individuals  exposed  to  destruction  were  preserved,  a 
nation  exposed  to  destruction  would  be  destroyed.  We 
do  not,  however,  say,  that  if  a  people,  in  the  customary 
state  of  men's  passions,  should  be  assailed  by  an  in- 
vader, and  should,  on  a  sudden,  choose  to  declare  that 
they  would  try  whether  Providence  would  protect  them 
— of  such  a  people,  w^e  do  not  say  that  they  would 
experience  protection,  and  that  none  of  them  would  be 
killed.  But  we  say  that  the  evidence  of  experience  is, 
that  a  people  who  habitually  regard  the  obligations  of 
Christianity  in  their  conduct  towards  other  men,  and 
who  steadfastly  refuse,  through  whatever  consequences, 
to  engage  in  acts  of  hostility,  will  experience  protection 
in  their  peacefulness :  and  it  matters  nothing  to  the  argu- 
ment, whether  we  refer  that  protection  to  the  immediate 
agency  of  Providence,  or  to  the  influence  of  such  con- 
duct upon  the  minds  of  men. 

Such  has  been  the  experience  of  the  unoffending  and 
unresisting,  in  individual  life.  A  national  example  of 
a  refusal  to  bear  arms  has  only  once  been  exhibited 
to  the  world  :  but  that  one  example  has  proved,  so  far  as 
its  political  circumstances  enabled  it  to  prove,  all  that 
humanity  could  desire,  and  all  that  skepticism  could 
demand,  in  favour  of  our  ars^ument. 

It  has  been  the  ordinary  practice  of  those  who  have 
colonized  distant  countries,  to  force  a  footing,  or  to 
maintain  it,  with  the  sword.  One  of  the  first  objects 
has  been  to  build  a  fort  and  to  provide  a  military.  The 
adventurers  became  soldiers,  and  the  colony  was  a  gar- 
rison.    Pennsylvania  was,  however,  colonized  by  men 


119 

who  believed  that  war  was  absolutely  incompatible 
with  Christianity,  and  who  therefore  resolved  not  to 
practise  it.  Having  determined  not  to  fight,  they 
maintained  no  soldiers  and  possessed  no  arms.  They 
planted  themselves  in  a  country  that  was  surrounded 
by  savages,  and  by  savages  who  knew  they  were  un- 
armed. If  easiness  of  conquest,  or  incapability  of 
defence,  could  subject  them  to  outrage,  the  Pennsylva- 
nians  might  have  been  the  very  sport  of  violence. 
Plunderers  might  have  robbed  them  without  retaliation, 
and  armies  might  have  slaughtered  them  without 
resistance.  If  they  did  not  give  a  temptation  to  out- 
rage, no  temptation  could  be  given.  But  these  were  the 
people  who  possessed  their  country  in  security,  whilst 
those  around  them  were  trembling  for  their  existence. 
This  was  a  land  of  peace,  whilst  every  other  was  a 
land  of  war.  The  conclusion  is  inevitable,  although  it 
is  extraordinary — they  were  in  no  need  of  arms  because 
they  7vould  not  use  them. 

These  Indians  were  sufficiently  ready  to  commit  out- 
rages upon  other  states,  and  often  visited  them  with 
desolation  and  slaughter;  with  that  sort  of  desolation, 
and  that  sort  of  slaughter,  which  might  be  expected 
from  men  whom  civilization  had  not  reclaimed  from 
cruelty,  and  whom  religion  had  not  awed  into  for- 
bearance. "But  whatever  the  quarrels  of  the  Penn- 
sylvanian  Indians  were  with  others,  they  uniformly 
respected,  and  held  as  it  were  sacred,  the  territories 
of  William  Penn."*  "  The  Pennsylvanians  never  lost 
man,  woman,  or  child  by  them,  which  neither  the 
colony  of  Maryland,  nor  that  of  Virginia  could  say,  no 
more  than  the  great  colony  of  New  England."! 

The  security  and  quiet  of  Pennsylvania  was  not  a 
transient  freedom  from  war,  such  as  might  accidentally 
happen  to  any  nation.     She  continued  to  enjoy  it  "  for 

*  Clarkson.  f  Oldmixon,  A  nno  1708. 


120 

more  than  seventy  years,"*  and  subsisted  in  the  midst 
of  six  Indian  nations,  "without  so  much  as  a  mihtia  for 
her  defence."t  "The  Pennsylvanians  became  armed, 
though  without  arms;  they  became  strong,  though 
without  strength ;  they  became  safe,  without  the  ordi- 
nary means  of  safety.  The  constable's  staff  was  the 
only  instrument  of  authority  amongst  them  for  the 
greater  part  of  a  century,  and  never,  during  the  ad- 
ministration of  Penn  or  that  of  his  proper  successors, 
was  there  a  quarrel  or  a  war."J 

I  cannot  wonder  that  these  people  were  not  molested 
— extraordinary  and  unexampled  as  their  security  was. 
There  is  something  so  noble  in  this  perfect  confidence 
in  the  Supreme  Protector,  in  this  utter  exclusion  of 
**  slavish  fear,"  in  this  voluntary  relinquishment  of  the 
means  of  injury  or  of  defence,  that  I  do  not  wonder 
that  even  ferocity  could  be  disarmed  by  such  virtue 
A  people,  generously  living  without  arms,  amidst  na- 
tions of  warriors !  Who  would  attack  a  people  such 
as  this  ?  There  are  few  men  so  abandoned  as  not  to 
respect  such  confidence.  It  were  a  peculiar  and  an 
unusual  intensity  of  wickedness  that  would  not  even 
revere  it. 

And  when  was  the  security  of  Pennsylvania  molested, 
and  its  peace  destroyed? — When  the  men  who  had 
directed  its  counsels  and  who  would  not  engage  in  war, 
were  outvoted  in  its  legislature: — when  they  who  supposed 
that  there  was  greater  security  in  the  sword  than  in  Chris- 
tianity, became  the  predominating  body.  From  that 
hour,  the  Pennsylvanians  transferred  their  confidence 
in  Christian  principles  to  a  confidence  in  their  arms; 
and  from  that  hour  to  the  present  they  have  been  subject 
to  war. 

Such  is  the  evidence  derived  from  a  national  examp. 
of  the  consequences  of  a  pursuit  of  the  Christian  policj 

*  Proud.  f  Oldmixon.  +  Clarkson,  Life  of  Penn. 


121 

in  relation  to  war.  Here  are  a  people  who  absolutely 
refused  to  fight,  and  who  incapacitated  themselves  for 
resistance  by  refusing  to  possess  arms,  and  this  was  the 
people  whose  land,  amidst  surrounding  broils  and 
slaughter,  was  selected  as  a  land  of  security  and  peace. 
The  only  national  opportunity  which  the  virtue  of  the 
Christian  world  has  afforded  us  of  ascertaining  the 
safety  of  relying  upon  God  for  defence,  has  determined 
that  it  is  safe. 

If  the  evidence  which  we  possess  do  not  satisfy  us 
of  the  expediency  of  confiding  in  God,  what  evidence 
do  we  ask,  or  what  can  we  receive?  We  have  his 
promise  that  he  will  protect  those  who  abandon  their 
seeming  interests  in  the  performance  of  his  will,  and 
we  have  the  testimony  of  those  who  have  confided  in 
him,  that  he  has  protected  them.  Can  the  advocate 
of  war  produce  one  single  instance  in  the  history  of 
man,  of  a  person  who  had  given  an  unconditional  obe- 
dience to  the  will  of  heaven,  and  who  did  not  find  that 
his  conduct  was  wise  as  well  as  virtuous,  that  it  accord- 
ed with  his  interests  as  well  as  with  his  duty  ?  We  ask 
the  same  question  in  relation  to  the  peculiar  obligations 
to  irresistance.  Where  is  the  man  who  regrets,  that  iu 
observance  of  the  forbearing  duties  of  Christianity,  he 
consigned  his  preservation  to  the  superintendence  of 
God  ?— And  the  solitary  national  example  that  is  before 
us  confirms  the  testimony  of  private  life;  for  there  is 
suflicient  reason  for  believing  that  no  nation,  in  modern 
ages,  has  possessed  so  large  a  portion  of  virtue  or  of 
happiness  as  Pennsylvania  before  it  had  seen  human 
blood.  I  would  therefore  repeat  the  question — What 
evidence  do  we  ask,  or  can  we  receive? 

This  is  the  point  from  which  we  wander — we  do  not 

BELIEVE     IN    THE     PROVIDENCE     OF     GoD.         When     this 

statement  is  formally  made  to  us,  we  think,  perhaps, 
that  it  is  not  true;  but  our  practice  is  an  evidence  of  its 


122 

truth — for  if  we  did  believe,  we  should  also  confide  in  it, 
and  should  be  willing  to  stake  upon  it  the  consequences 
of  our  obedience.*  We  can  talk  with  sufficient  fluency 
of  "trusting  in  Providence,"  but  in  the  application 
of  it  to  our  conduct  in  life,  we  know  wonderfully 
little.  Who  is  it  that  confides  in  Providence,  and  for 
what  does  he  trust  him?  Does  his  confidence  induce 
him  to  set  aside  his  own  views  of  interest  and  safety, 
and  simply  to  obey  precepts  which  appear  inexpedient 
and  unsafe  ?  This  is  the  confidence  that  is  of  value, 
and  of  w^hich  we  know  so  little.  There  are  many  who 
believe  that  war  is  disallowed  by  Christianity,  and  who 
would  rejoice  that  it  were  for  ever  abolished  ;  but  there 
are  few  who  are  willing  to  maintain  an  undaunted  and 
unyielding  stand  against  it.  They  can  talk  of  the 
loveliness  of  peace,  ay,  and  argue  against  the  lawful- 
ness of  war ;  but  when  difficulty  or  suffering  would  be 
the  consequence,  they  will  not  refuse  to  do  what  they 
know  to  be  unlawful,  they  will  not  practise  the  peaceful- 
ness  which  they  say  they  admire.  Those  who  are  ready 
to  sustain  the  consequences  of  undeviating  obedience  are 
the  supporters  of  whom  Christianity  stands  in  need.  She 
wants  men  who  are  willing  to  suffei*  for  her  principles. 
It  is  necessary  for  us  to  know  by  what  principles  we 
are  governed.  Are  we  regulated  by  the  injunctions  of 
God,  or  are  we  not?  If  there  be  any  lesson  of  morality 
which  it  is  of  importance  to  mankind  to  learn,  and  if 
there  be  any  which  they  have  not  yet  learnt,  it  is  the 
necessity  of  simply  performing  the  duties  of  Christian- 
ity without  reference  to  consequences.  If  we  could 
persuade  ourselves  to  do  this,  we  should  certainly  pass 
life  with  greater  consistency  of  conduct,  and  as  I  firmlj 

*  "The  dread  of  being-  destroyed  by  our  enemies  if  we  do  not  go  to  war  with 
them,  is  a  plain  and  unequivocal  proof  of  our  disbelief  in  the  superintendence 
of  Divine  Providence." — The  Lawfulness  of  defensive  War  impartially  con- 
sidered; by  a  Member  of  the  Church  of  England. 


123 

believe  in  greater  enjoyment  and  greater  peace.  The 
world  has  had  many  examples  of  such  fidelity  and  con- 
fidence. Who  have  been  the  Christian  martyrs  of  all 
ages,  but  men  who  maintained  their  fidelity  to  Christian- 
ity through  whatever  consequences?  They  were  faith- 
ful to  the  Christian  creed ;  we  ought  to  be  faithful  to  the 
Christian  morality;  without  morality  the  profession  of  a 
creed  is  vain.  Nay,  we  have  seen  that  there  have  been 
martyrs  to  the  duties  of  morality,  and  to  these  very 
d  uties  of  peacefulness.  The  duties  remain  the  same, 
but  where  is  our  obedience-? 

I  hope,  for  the  sake  of  his  understanding  and  his 
heart,  that  the  reader  will  not  say  I  reason  on  the  sup- 
position that  the  world  was  what  it  is  not;  and  that 
although  these  duties  may  be  binding  upon  us  when 
the  world  shall  become  purer,  yet  that  we  must  now 
accommodate  ourselves  to  the  state  of  things  as  they 
are.  This  is  to  say  that  in  a  land  of  assassins,  assassi- 
nation would  be  right.  If  no  one  begins  to  reform  his 
practice,  until  others  have  begun  before  him,  reforma- 
tion will  never  be  begun.  If  apostles,  or  martyrs,  or 
reformers  had  ''  accommodated  themselves  to  the  exist- 
ing state  of  things,"  where  had  now  been  Christianity? 
The  business  of  reformation  belongs  to  him  who  sees 
that  reformation  is  required.  The  world  has  no  other 
human  means  of  amendment.  If  you  believe  that  war 
is  not  allowed  by  Christianity,  it  is  your  business  to 
oppose  it ;  and  if  fear  or  distrust  should  raise  questions 
on  the  consequences,  apply  the  Vv^ords  of  our  Saviour 
—"What  is  that  to  thee?— Follow  thou  me." 

Our  great  misfortune  in  the  examination  of  the  duties 
of  Christianity,  is,  that  we  do  not  contemplate  them 
with  s-ufficient  simplicity.  We  do  not  estimate  them 
without  some  addition  or  abatement  of  our  own ;  there 
is  almost  always  some  iritervening  medium.  A  sort  of 
half  transparent  glass  is  liuxig  before  each  individual, 


124 

which  possesses  endless  shades  of  colour  and  degrees 
of  opacity,  and  which  presents  objects  with  endless 
varieties  of  distortion.  This  glass  is  coloured  by  our 
education  and  our  passions.  The  business  of  inoral 
culture  is  to  render  it  transparent.  The  perfection  of 
the  perceptive  part  of  moral  culture  is  to  remove  it 
from  before  us. — Simple  obedience  ovitliout  reference  to 
consequences,  is  our  great  duty.  I  know  that  philo- 
sophers have  told  us  otherwise :  I  know  that  we  have 
been  referred,  for  the  determination  of  our  duties, 
to  calculations  of  expediency  and  of  the  future  conse- 
quences of  our  actions :  — but  I  believe  that  in  whatever 
degree  this  philosophy  directs  us  to  forbear  an  uncon- 
ditional obedience  to  the  rules  of  our  religion,  it  will  be 
found,  that  when  Christianity  shall  advance  in  her 
purity  and  her  power,  she  will  sweep  it  from  the  earth 
with  the  besom  of  destruction. 

The  positions,  then,  which  we   have   endeavoured 
to  establish,  are  these : — 
I.  That   the    general    character    of    Christianity   is 
wholly  incongruous  with  war,  and  that  its  general 
duties  are  incompatible  with  it. 
II.  That  some  of  the  express  precepts  and  declara- 
tions of  Jesus  Christ  virtually  forbid  it. 

III.  That  his  practice  is  not  reconcileable  with  the 
supposition  of  its  lawfulness. 

IV.  That  the   precepts  and  practice  of  the  apostles 
correspond  with  those  of  our  Lord. 

V.  That  the  primitive  Christians  believed  that  Christ 
had  forbidden  war;  and  that  some  of  them  suffered 
death  in  affirmance  of  this  belief. 

VI.  That  God  has  declared  in  prophecy,  that  it  is  his 
will  that  war  should  eventually  be  eradicated  from 
the  earth;  and  this  eradication  will  be  effected  by 
Christianity,  by  the  influence  of  its  present  prin 
ciples. 


125 

VII.  That  those  who  have  refused  to  engage  in  war,  in 
consequence  of  their  belief  of  its  inconsistency 
with  Christianity,  have  found  that  Providence  has 
protected  them. 
Now  we  think  that  the  establishment  of  any  con- 
siderable number  of  these  positions  is  sufficient  for  our 
argument.  The  establishment  of  the  whole  forms  a 
body  of  evidence,  to  which  I  am  not  able  to  believe 
that  an  inquirer,  to  whom  the  subject  was  new,  would 
be  able  to  withhold  his  assent.  But  since  such  an 
inquirer  cannot  be  found,  I  would  invite  the  reader 
to  lay  prepossession  aside,  to  suppose  himself  to  have 
now  first  heard  of  battles  and  slaughter,  and  dispassion- 
ately to  examine  whether  the  evidence  in  favour  of 
peace  be  not  very  great,  and  whether  the  objections  to 
it  bear  any  proportion  to  the  evidence  itself  But  what- 
ever may  be  the  determination  upon  this  question, 
surely  it  is  reasonable  to  try  the  experiment  whether 
security  cannot  be  maintained  without  slaughter. 
Whatever  be  the  reasons  for  war,  it  is  certain  that  it 
produces  enormous  mischief  Even  waiving  the  obli- 
gations of  Christianity,  we  have  to  choose  between  evils 
that  are  certain  and  evils  that  are  doubtful ;  between 
the  actual  endurance  of  a  great  calamity,  and  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  less.  It  certainly  cannot  be  proved  that 
peace  would  not  be  the  best  policy;  and  sin-ce  we  know 
that  the  present  system  is  bad,  it  were  reasonable  and 
wise  to  try  whether  the  other  is  not  better.  In  reality, 
I  can  scarcely  conceive  the  possibility  of  greater  evil 
than  that  which  mankind  now  endure ;  an  evil,  moral 
and  physical,  of  far  wider  extent,  and  far  greater  inten- 
sity, than  our  familiarity  with  it  allows  us  to  suppose. 
If  a  system  of  peace  be  not  productive  of  less  evil  than 
the  system  of  war,  its  consequences  must  indeed  be 
enormously  bad ;  and  that  it  would  produce  such  conse- 
quences, we  have  no  warrant  for  believing  either  from 


126 

reason  or  from  practice — either  from  the  principles  of 
the  moral  government  of  God,  or  from  the  experience 
of  mankind.  Whenever  a  people  shall  pursue,  steadily 
and  uniformly,  the  pacific  morality  of  the  gospel,  and 
shall  do  this  from  the  pure  motive  of  obedience,  there  is 
no  reason  to  fear  for  the  consequences :  there  is  no  reason 
to  fear  that  they  would  experience  any  evils  such  as  we 
now  endure,  or  that  they  would  not  find  that  Christian- 
ity understands  their  interests  better  than  themselves; 
and  that  the  surest  and  the  only  rule  of  wisdom, 
of  safety,  and  of  expediency,  is  to  maintain  her  spirit  in 
every  circumstance  of  life. 

"There  is  reason  to  expect,"  says  Dr.  Johnson,  "that 
as  the  world  is  more  enlightened,  policy  and  morality 
will  at  last  be  reconciled."*'  When  this  enlightened 
period  shall  arrive,  we  shall  be  approaching,  and  we 
shall  not  till  then  approach,  that  era  of  purity  and  of 
peace,  when  "violence  shall  be  no  more  heard  in  our 
land,  wasting  nor  destruction  within  our  borders" — that 
era  in  which  God  has  promised  that  "they  shall  not 
hurt  nor  destroy  in  all  his  holy  mountain."  That  a 
period  like  this  will  come,  I  am  not  able  to  doubt :  I 
believe  it  because  it  is  not  credible  that  he  will  always 
endure  the  butchery  of  man  by  man;  because  he  has 
declared  that  he  will  not  endure  it;  and  because  I  think 
there  is  a  perceptible  approach  of  that  period  in  which 
he  will  say — "  It  is  enough."!  In  this  belief  I  rejoice: 
I  rejoice  that  the  number  is  increasing  of  those  who  are 
asking, — "Shall  the  sword  devour  forever?"  and  of 
those  who,  whatever  be  the  opinions  or  the  practice  of 
others,  are  openly  saying,  "I  am  for  peace. "f 

Whether  I  have  succeeded  in  establishing  the  posi- 
tion THAT  WAR,  OF    EVERY    KIND,  IS  INCOMPATIBLE    WITH 

Christianity,  it  is  not  my  business  to  determine ;  but 
of  this,  at  least,  I  can  assure  the  reader,  that  I  would  not 

^*  Falkland's  Islands  ]  2  Sam.  xxiv.  IG.  +  Psalm  cxx.  7. 


127 

have  intruded  this  inquiry  upon  the  public,  if  1  had  not 
believed,  with  undoubting  confidence,  that  the  position 
is  accordant  with  everlasting  truth;-— with  that  truth 
which  should  regulate  our  conduct  here,  and  which 
will  not  be  superseded  in  the  world  that  is  to  come 

LZ 


in. 


OBSERVATIONS  ON  THE  EFFECTS  OF  WAR. 


War'*s  least  horror  is  ih^  ensanguined  field. — Barbauld. 


There  are  few  maxims  of  more  unfailing  truth  than 
hat  "A  tree  is  known  by  its  fruits ;"  and  I  will  acknow- 
ledge that  if  the  lawfulness  of  war  were  to  be  deter min 
ed  by  a  reference  to  its  consequences,  I  should  willingly 
consign  it  to  this  test,  in  the  belief  that,  if  popular 
impressions  w^ere  suspended,  a  good,  or  a  benevolent,  or 
a  reasoning  man  would  find  little  cause  to  decide  in 
its  favour. 

In  attempting  to  illustrate  some  of  the  effects  of 
war,  it  is  my  purpose  to  inquire  not  so  much  into  its 
civil  or  political,  as  into  its  moral  consequences;  and 
of  the  latter,  to  notice  those,  chiefly,  which  commonly 
obtain  little  of  our  inquiry  or  attention.  To  speak 
strictly  indeed,  civil  and  political  considerations  are 
necessarily  involved  in  the  moral  tendency  :  for  the 
nappiness  of  society  is  always  diminished  by  the  dimi- 
nution of  morality;  and  enlightened  policy  knows  that 
the  greatest  support  of  a  state  is  the  virtue  of  the  people. 

The  reader  needs  not  be  reminded  of — what  nothing 
but  the  frequency  of  the  calamity  can  make  him  forget 
— the  intense  sufferings  and  irreparable  deprivations 
which  a  battle  inevitably   entails  upon   private   life. 

128 


129 

These  are  calamities  of  which  the  world  thinks  little, 
and  which,  if  it  thought  of  them,  it  could  not  remove. 
A  father  or  a  husband  can  seldom  be  replaced  :  a  void  is 
created  in  the  domestic  felicity,  which  there  is  little 
hope  that  the  future  will  fill.  By  the  slaughter  of  a 
war,  there  are  thousands  who  weep  in  unpitied  and 
unnoticed  secrecy,  whom  the  world  does  not  see ; 
and  thousands  who  retire,  in  silence,  to  hopeless  pover- 
ty, for  wdiom  it  does  not  care.  To  these,  the  conquest 
of  a  kingdom  is  of  little  importance.  The  loss  of  a 
protector  or  a  friend  is  ill  repaid  by  empty  glory.  An 
addition  of  territory  may  add  titles  to  a  king,  but  the 
brilliancy  of  a  crown  throws  little  light  upon  domestic 
gloom.  It  is  not  my  intention  to  insist  upon  these 
calamities,  intense,  and  irreparable,  and  unnumbered  as 
they  are  ;  but  those  who  begin  a  war  without  taking 
them  into  their  estimates  of  its  consequences,  must 
be  regarded  as,  at  most,  half-seeing  politicians.  The 
legitimate  object  of  political  measures  is  the  good  of  the 
j)eople — and  a  great  sum  ot  good  a  war  must  produce^ 
if  it  outbalances  even  this  portion  of  its  mischiefs. 

In  the  more  obvious  effects  of  war,  there  is,  however, 
a  sufficient  sum  of  evil  and  wretchedness.  The  most 
dreadful  of  these  is  the  destruction  of  human  life. 
The  frequency  with  which  this  destruction  is  represented 
to  our  minds  has  almost  extinguished  our  perception  of 
its  awfulness  and  horror.  In  the  interval  between 
anno  1141  and  1815,  our  country  has  been  at  war  with 
France  alone,  tivo  hundred  and  sixty-six  years.  If  to 
this  we  add  our  wars  with  other  countries,  probably  we 
shall  find  that  one  half  of  the  last  six  or  seven  centuries 
has  been  spent  by  this  country  in  war !  A  dreadful 
picture  of  human  violence !  There  is  no  means  of 
knowing  how^  many  victims  have  been  sacrificed  during 
this  lapse  of  ag  ^s.     Those  who  have  fallen  in  battle, 

R 


130 

and  those  who  have  perished  "in  tents  and  ships, 
amidst  damps  and  putrefaction,"  probably  amount  to  a 
number  greater  than  the  number  of  men  now  existing 
in  France  and  England  together.  And  where  is  our 
equivalent  good? — "The  wars  of  Europe,  for  these  two 
hundred  years  last  past,  by  the  confession  of  all  parties, 
have  really  ended  in  the  advantage  of  none,  but  to  the 
manifest  detriment  of  all."  This  is  the  testimony  of 
the  celebrated  Dr.  Josiah  Tucker,  Dean  of  Gloucester : 
and  Erasmus  has  said,  "I  know  not  whether  any  war 
ever  succeeded  so  fortunately  in  all  its  events,  but  that 
the  conqueror,  if  he  had  a  heart  to  feel  or  an  under- 
standing to  judge  as  he  ought  to  do,  repented  that 
he  had  ever  eng^aged  in  it  at  all." 

Since  the  last  war,  we  have  heard  much  of  the  dis- 
tresses of  the  country ;  and  whatever  be  the  opinion 
whether  they  have  been  brought  upon  us  by  the  peace, 
none  will  question  whether  they  have  been  brought 
upon  us  by  war.  The  peace  may  be  the  occasion  of 
them,  but  war  has  been  the  cause.  I  have  no  wish  to 
declaim  upon  the  amount  of  our  national  debt — that  it 
is  a  great  evil,  and  that  it  has  been  brought  upon  us 
by  successive  contests,  no  one  disputes.  Such  consi- 
derations ought,  undoubtedly,  to  influence  the  conduct 
of  public  men  in  their  disagreements  with  other  states, 
even  if  his/her  considerations  do  not  influence  it. 
They  ought  to  form  part  of  the  calculations  of  the  evil 
of  hostility.  I  believe  that  a  greater  mass  of  human 
suffering  and  loss  of  human  enjoyment  are  occasioned 
by  the  pecuniary  distresses  of  a  war,  than  any  ordinary 
advantages  of  a  war  compensate.  But  this  consi- 
deration seems  too  remote  to  obtain  our  notice.  Anger 
at  offence,  or  hope  of  triumph,  overpowers  the  sober 
calculations  of  reason,  and  outbalances  the  weight  of 
after  and  long  continued  calamities.     If  the  happiness 


131 

of  the  people  wore,  what  it  ought  to  be,  the  primary 
and  the  ultimate  object  of  national  measures,  1  think 
that  the  policy  which  pursued  this  object  would  often 
find  that  even  the  pecuniary  distresses  resulting  from 
a  war  make  a  greater  deduction  from  the  quantum  of 
felicity,  than  those  evils  which  the  war  may  have  been 
designed  to  avoid.  At  least  the  distress  is  certain  ;  the 
advantage  doubtful.  It  is  known  that  during  the  past 
eight  years  of  the  present  peace,  a  considerable  portion 
of  the  community  have  been  in  suffering  in  conse- 
quence of  w^ar.  Eight  years  of  suffering  to  a  million  of 
human  creatures,  is  a  serious  thing  !  •'  It  is  no  answer  to 
say,  that  this  universal  suffering,  and  even  the  deso- 
lation that  attends  it,  are  the  inevitable  consequences 
and  events  of  war,  how  warrantably  soever  entered 
into,  but  rather  an  argument  that  no  war  can  be  war- 
rantably entered  into,  that  may  produce  such  intolerable 
mischiefs."* 

There  is  much  of  truth,  as  there  is  of  eloquence, 
in  these  observations  of  one  of  the  most  acute  intellects 
that  our  country  has  produced  : — ''It  is  wonderful  with 
what  coolness  and  indifference  the  greater  part  of  man- 
kind see  war  commenced.  Those  that  hear  of  it  at  a 
distance,  or  read  of  it  in  books,  but  have  never  presented 
its  evils  to  their  minds,  consider  it  as  little  more  than  a 
splendid  game,  a  proclamation,  an  army,  a  battle,  and  a 
triumph.  Some,  indeed,  must  perish  in  the  most  suc- 
cessful field ;  but  they  die  upon  the  bed  of  honour,  resign 
their  lives  amidst  the  joys  of  conquest,  and  filled  with 
England's  glory,  smile  in  death.  The  life  of  a  modern 
soldier  is  ill  represented  by  heroic  fiction.     War  has 

*  Lord  Clareiidon — who,  however,  excepts  those  wars  which  are  likely 
"  to  introduce  as  much  benefit  to  the  world,  as  damage  and  inc&nvenience  to 
a  part  of  it."  The  morality  of  this  celebrated  man,  also,  seems  thus  to  have 
been  wrecked  upon  the  rock  of  expediency 


132 

means  of  destruction  more  formidable  than  the  cannon 
and  the  sword.  Of  the  thousands  and  ten  thousands 
that  perished  in  our  late  contests  with  France  and 
Spain,  a  very  small  part  ever  felt  the  stroke  of  an  enemy  ' 
The  rest  languished  in  tents  and  ships,  amidst  damps 
and  putrefaction,  gasping  and  groaning,  unpitied 
amongst  men  made  obdurate  by  long  continuance  of 
hopeless  misery ;  and  were  at  last  whelmed  in  pits,  or 
heaved  into  the  ocean,  without  notice,  and  without 
remembrance.  By  incommodious  encampments  and 
unwholesome  stations,  where  courage  is  useless  and 
enterprise  impracticable,  fleets  are  silently  dispeopled, 
and  armies  sluggishly  melted  away. 

''Thus  is  a  people  gradually  exhausted  for  the  most 
part  with  little  effect.  The  wars  of  civilized  nations 
make  very  slow  changes  in  the  system  of  empire.  The 
public  perceives  scarcely  any  alteration  but  an  increase 
of  debt;  and  the  few  individuals  who  are  benefited,  are 
not  supposed  to  have  the  clearest  right  to  their  advan- 
tages. If  he  that  shared  the  danger  enjoyed  the  profit, 
and  after  bleeding  in  the  battle,  grew  rich  by  the  victo- 
ry, he  might  show  his  gains  without  enyy.  But  at  the 
conclusion  of  a  ten  years'  war,  how  are  we  recom- 
pensed for  the  death  of  multitudes,  and  the  expense  of 
millions,  but  by  contemplating  the  sudden  glories  of 
paymasters  and  agents,  and  contractors  and  commissa- 
ries, whose  equipages  shine  like  meteors,  and  whose 
palaces  rise  like  exhalations  ? 

*' These  are  the  men,  who  without  virtue,  labour,  or 
hazard,  are  growing  rich  as  their  country  is  impo- 
verished ;  they  rejoice  when  obstinacy  or  ambition  adds 
another  year  to  slaughter  and  devastation,  and  laugh 
from  their  desks  at  bravery  and  science,  while  they 
are  adding  figure  to  figure,  and  cipher  to  cipher,  hoping 


133 

for  a  new  contract  from  anew  armament,  and  compute 
ing  the  profits  of  a  siege  or  a  tempest."* 

Our  business,  however,  is  principally  with  the  moral 
effects  of  war. 

"  The  tenderness  of  nature,  and  the  integrity  of  man- 
ners, which  are  driven  away  or  powerfully  discounte- 
nanced by  the  corruption  of  w^ar,  are  not  quickly 
recovered — and  the  weeds  which  grow  up  in  the  short- 
est war,  can  hardly  be  pulled  up  and  extirpated  with- 
out a  long  and  unsuspected  peace." — "  War  introduces 
and  propagates  opinions  and  practice  as  much  against 
heaven  as  against  eartli ; — it  lays  our  natures  and  man- 
ners as  waste  as  our  gardens  and  our  habitations;  and 
we  can  as  easily  preserve  the  beauty  of  the  one  as  the 
integrity  of  the  other,  under  the  cursed  jurisdiction  of 
drums  and  trumpets."t 

"  War  does  more  harm  to  the  morals  of  men  than 
even  to  their  property  and  persons." J  ''  It  is  a  tem- 
porary repeal  of  all  the  principles  of  virtue. "§  "There 
is  not  a  virtue  of  gospel  goodness  but  has  its  death-blow 
from  war.  "II 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  greater  sum  of  moral  evil 
resulting  from  war,  is  suffered  by  those  who  are  im- 
mediately engaged  in  it,  or  by  the  public.  The  mischief 
is  most  extensive  upon  the  community,  but  upon  the 
profession  it  is  most  intense. 

Rara  fides  pietasque  viris  qui  castra  sequuntur. 

LUCAN. 

No  one  pretends  to  applaud  the  morals  of  an  army, 
and  for  its  religion,  few  think  of  it  at  all.  A  soldier  is 
depraved  even  to  a  proverb.  The  fact  is  too  notorious 
to  be  insisted  upon,  that  thousands  who  had  filled  their 

*  Johnson — Falkland's  Islands.  f  Lord  Clarendon's  Essays. 

%  Erasmus.  §  Hall.  |1  William  Law,  A.M. 


134 

stations  in  life  with  propriety,  and  been  virtuous  from 
principle,  have  lost,  by  a  military  life,  both  the  practice 
and  the  regard  of  morality ;  and  v^hen  they  have 
become  habituated  to  the  vices  of  war,  have  laughed  at 
their  honest  and  plodding  brethren  who  are  still  spirit- 
less enough  for  virtue,  or  stupid  enough  for  piety.  The 
vices  which  once  had  shocked  them  become  the  subject, 
not  of  acquiescence,  but  of  exultation.  ''Almost  all 
the  professions,"  says  Dr.  Knox,  "have  some  charac- 
teristic manners  which  the  professors  seem  to  adopt 
with  little  examination,  as  necessary  and  as  honourable 
distinctions.  It  happens,  unfortunately,  that  profligacy, 
libertinism,  and  infidelity  are  thought,  by  weaker  minds, 
almost  as  necessary  a  part  of  a  soldier's  uniform,  as  his 
shoulderknot.  To  hesitate  at  an  oath,  to  decline  in- 
toxication, to  profess  a  regard  for  religion,  would  be 
almost  as  ignominious  as  to  refuse  a  challenge."^ 

It  is,  however,  not  necessary  to  insist  upon  the  im- 
moral influence  of  war  upon  the  military  character, 
since  no  one  probably  will  dispute  it.  Nor  is  it  diffi- 
cult to  discover  how  the  immorality  is  occasioned.  It 
is  obvious  that  those  who  are  continually  engaged  in  a 
practice  "in  which  almost  all  the  vices  are  incorpo- 
rated," and  who  promote  this  practice  with  individual 
eagerness,  cannot,  without  the  intervention  of  a  miracle, 
be  otherwise  than  collectively  depraved. 

If  the  soldier  engages  in  the  destruction  of  his  spe- 
cies he  should  at  least  engage  it  in  with  reluctance, 
and  abandon  it  with  joy.  The  slaughter  of  his  fellow 
men  should  be  dreadful  in  execution  and  in  thought. 
But  what  is  his  aversion  or  reluctance  ?  He  feels  none 
— it  is  not  even  a  subject  of  seriousness  to  him.  He 
butchers  his  fellow  candidates  for  heaven,  as  a  wood- 

*  Essays. — No.  19.  Knox  justly  makes  much  exception  to  the  applica- 
bility of  these  censures. 


135 

man  fells  a  coppice;  with  as  little  reluctance  and  as  little 
regret. 

Those  who  will  compute  the  tendency  of  this  fami- 
liarity with  human  destruction,  cannot  doubt  whether 
it  will  be  pernicious  to  the  moral  character.  What  is 
the  hope,  that  he  who  is  familiar  with  murder,  who  has 
himself  often  perpetrated  it,  and  who  exults  in  the 
perpetration,  will  retain  undepraved  the  principles  of 
virtue?  His  moral  feelings  are  blunted:  his  moral 
vision  is  obscured.  We  say  his  moral  vision  is  ob- 
scured; for  we  do  not  think  it  possible  that  he  should 
retain  even  the  perception  of  Christian  purity.  The 
soldier,  again,  who  plunders  the  citizen  of  another 
nation  without  remorse  or  reflection,  and  bears  away  the 
spoil  with  triumph,  will  inevitably  lose  something  of 
his  principles  of  probity.  These  principles  are  shaken; 
an  inroad  is  made  upon  their  integrity,  and  it  is  an  in- 
road that  makes  after  inroads  the  more  easy.  Mankind 
do  not  generally  resist  the  influence  of  habit.  If  we 
rob  and  shoot  those  who  are  "enemies"  to-day,  we  are 
in  some  degree  prepared  to  shoot  and  rob  those  who 
are  not  enemies  to-morrow.  The  strength  of  the  re- 
straining moral  principle  is  impaired.  Law  may,  indeed, 
still  restrain  us  from  violence;  but  the  power  and 
efficiency  of  principle  is  diminished.  And  this  aliena- 
tion of  the  mind  from  the  practice,  the  love,  and  the 
perception  of  Christian  purity  therefore,  of  necessity 
extends  its  influence  to  the  other  circumstances  of  life; 
and  it  is  hence,  in  part,  that  the  general  profligacy  of 
armies  arises.  That  which  we  have  not  practised  in 
war  we  are  little  likely  to  practise  in  peace ;  and  there 
is  no  hope  we  shall  possess  the  goodness  which  we 
neither  love  nor  perceive. 

Another  means  by  which  war  becomes   pernicious 

to  the  moral  character  of  the  soldier,  is  the  incapacity 
M 


136 

which  the  profession  occasions  for  the  sober  pursuits 
of  life.  ''The  profession  of  a  soldier,"  says  Dr.  Paley, 
''almost  always  unfits  men  for  the  business  of  regular 
occupations."  On  the  question,  v/hether  it  be  better 
that  of  three  inhabitants  of  a  village,  one  should  be 
a  soldier  and  two  husbandmen,  or  that  all  should  occa- 
sionally become  both,  he  says  that  from  the  latter 
arrangement  the  country  receives  three  raw  mihtia 
men  and  three  idle  and  pi'ojiigate  peasants.  War  can- 
not be  continual.  Soldiers  must  sometimes  become 
citizens :  and  citizens  who  are  unfit  for  stated  business 
will  be  idle;  and  they  who  are  idle  will  scarcely  be 
virtuous.  A  political  project,  therefore,  such  as  a  war, 
which  will  eventually  pour  fifty  or  a  hundred  thousand 
of  such  men  upon  the  community,  must  of  necessity  be 
an  enormous  evil  to  a  state.  It  were  an  infelicitous 
defence  to  say,  that  soldiers  do  not  become  idle  until 
the  war  is  closed  or  they  leave  the  army. — To  keep 
men  out  of  idleness  by  employing  them  in  cutting 
other  men's  limbs  and  bodies,  is  at  least  an  extraor- 
dinary economy;  and  the  profligacy  still  remains;  for 
unhappily  if  war  keeps  soldiers  busy,  it  does  not  keep 
them  good. 

By  a  peculiar  and  unhappy  coincidence,  the  moral 
evil  attendant  upon  the  profession  is  perpetuated  by 
the  after  system  of  half-pay.  We  have  no  concern 
with  this  system  on  political  or  pecuniary  considera- 
tions ;  but  it  wall  be  obvious  that  those  w^ho  return  from 
war,  with  the  principles  and  habits  of  war,  are  little 
likely  to  improve  either  by  a  life  without  necessary 
occupation  or  express  object.  By  this  system,  there 
are  thousands  of  men,  in  the  prime  or  in  the  bloom  of 
life,  who  live  without  such  object  or  occupation.  This 
would  be  an  evil  if  it  happened  to  any  set  of  men,  but 
upon  men  who  have  been  soldiers  the  evil  is  peculiarly 


137 

intense.  He  whose  sense  of  moral  obligation  has  been 
impaired  by  the  circumstances  of  his  former  life,  and 
whose  former  life  has  induced  habits  of  disinclination  to 
regular  pursuits,  is  the  man  who,  above  all  others,  it  is 
unfortunate  for  the  interests  of  purity  should  be  sup- 
ported on  "half-pay."  If  w^ar  have  occasioned  ''unfit- 
ness for  regular  occupations,"  he  will  not  pursue  them, 
if  it  have  familiarized  him  with  profligacy,  he  will  be 
little  restrained  by  virtue.  And  the  consequences  of 
consigning  men  under  such  circumstances  to  society, 
at  a  period  of  life  when  the  mind  is  busy  and  restless 
and  the  passions  are  strong,  must,  of  inevitable  neces- 
sity, be  bad. — The  officer  who  leaves  the  army  with  the 
income  only  which  the  country  allows  him,  often  finds 
sufficient  difficulty  in  maintaining  the  character  of  a 
gentleman.  A  gentleman  however  he  will  be;  and  he 
who  resolves  to  appear  rich  whilst  he  is  poor,  who  will 
not  increase  his  fortune  by  industry,  and  who  has  learnt 
to  have  few  restraints  from  principle,  sometimes  easily 
persuades  himself  to  pursue  schemes  of  but  very  ex- 
ceptionable probity.  Indeed,  by  his  peculiar  law,  the 
"law  of  honour,"  honesty  is  not  required. 

I  do  not  know  whether  it  be  politic  that  he  who  has 
held  a  commission  should  not  be  expected  to  use  a 
ledger  or  a  yard  ;  but  since,  by  thus  becoming  a  "mili- 
tary gentleman,"  the  number  is  increased  of  those  who 
regulate  their  conduct  by  the  law  of  honoMr,  tlie  rule  is 
necessarily  pernicious  in  its  effects.  When  H  is  con- 
sidered that  this  law  allows  of  "  profaneness,  neglect 
of  public  w^orship  and  private  devotion,  cruelty  to  ser- 
vants, rigorous  treatment  of  tenants  or  other  dependants, 
want  of  charity  to  the  poor,  injuries  to  tradesmen 
by  insolvency  or  delay  of  payment,  with  numberless 
examples  of  the  same  kind;"  that  it  is,  "in  most  in- 
stances, favourable  to  the  licentious  indulgence  of  tho 


138 

natural  passions;"  that  it  allows  of  "adultery,  drunk 
enness,  prodigality,  duelling-,  and  of  revenge  in  the 
extreme"^ — when  all  this  is  considered,  it  is  manifestly 
inevitable,  that  those  who  regulate  their  conduct  by  the 
maxims  of  such  a  law,  must  become,  as  a  body,  reduced 
to  a  low  station  in  the  scale  of  morality. f 

We  insist  upon  these  things  because  they  are  the  con- 
sequences of  war.  We  have  no  concern  with  "  half-pay," 
or  with  the  "law  of  honour;"  but  with  war,  which 
extends  the  evil  of  the  one,  and  creates  the  evil  of  the 
other.  Soldiers  may  be  depraved — and  part  of  their 
depravity  is,  undoubtedly,  their  crime,  but  part  also  is 
their  misfortune.  The  rvhole  evil  is  imputable  to  war ;  and 
we  say  that  this  evil  forms  a  powerful  evidence  against 
it,  whether  we  direct  that  evidence  to  the  abstract  ques- 
tion of  its  lawfulness  or  to  the  practical  question  of  its 
expediency.  That  can  scarcely  be  law^-^l  which  neces- 
sarily occasions  such  enormous  depravity.  That  can 
scarcely  be  expedient  w^hich  is  so  pernicious  to  virtue, 
and  therefore  to  the  state. 

The  economy  of  war  requires  of  every  soldier  an 
implicit  submission  to  his  superior;  and  this  submission 
is  required  of  every  gradation  of  rank  to  that  above  it. 
This  system  may  be  necessary  to  hostile  operations,  but 
I  think  it  is  unquestionably  adverse  to  intellectual  and 
moral  excellence. 

*  Dr.  Paley. 

f  There  is  something-  very  unmanly  and  cowardly  in  some  of  the  maxims 
of  this  law  of  honour.  How  unlike  the  fortitude,  the  manliness  of  rea 
courage,  are  the  motives  of  him  who  fights  a  duel  I  He  accepts  a  challenge, 
commonly  because  he  is  afraid  to  refuse  it.  The  question  with  him  is 
whether  he  fears  more,  a  pistol  or  the  ivorld^s  di-ead  frown ,-  and  his  conduc, 
is  determined  by  the  preponderating  influence  of  one  of  these  objects  of  fear 
If  I  am  told  that  he  probably  feels  no  fear  of  death;  I  answer,  that  if  he  fears 
not  the  death  of  a  duellist,  his  principles  have  sunk  to  that  abyss  of  depra- 
vity, whence  nothing  but  the  interposition  of  Omnipotence  is  likely  to  reclaim 
them. 


139 

The  very  nature  of  unconditional  obedience  implies 
the  relinquishment  of  the  use  of  the  reasoning  powers. 
Little  more  is  required  of  the  soldier  than  that  he  be 
obedient  and  brave.  His  obedience  is  that  of  an  ani- 
mal, which  is  moved  by  a  goad  or  a  bit,  without  judg 
ment  or  volition  of  his  own ;  and  his  bravery  is  that  of 
a  mastiff,  v^^hich  fights  whatever  mastiff  others  pu* 
before  him. — It  is  obvious  that  in  such  agency,  the 
intellect  and  the  understanding  have  little  part.  Now 
I  think  that  this  is  important.  He  who,  v^ith  whatever 
motive,  resigns  the  direction  of  his  conduct  implicitly 
to  another,  surely  cannot  retain  that  erectness  and  in 
dependence  of  mind,  that  manly  consciousness  of  mental 
freedom,  which  is  one  of  the  highest  privileges  of  our 
nature.  The  rational  being  becomes  reduced  in  the 
intellectual  scale:  an  encroachment  is  made  upon  the 
integrity  of  its  independence.  God  has  given  us,  in- 
dividually, capacities  for  the  regulation  of  our  indivi- 
dual conduct.  To  resign  its  direction,  therefore,  to  the 
despotism  of  another,  appears  to  be  an  unmanly  and 
unjustifiable  relinquishment  of  the  privileges  which  he 
has  granted  to  its.  Referring  simply  to  the  conclusions 
of  reason,  I  think  those  conclusions  would  be,  that  mili- 
tary obedience  must  be  pernicious  to  the  mind.  And 
if  we  proceed  from  reasoning  to  facts,  I  believe  that  our 
conclusions  will  be  confirmed.  Is  the  military  cha- 
racter distinguished  by  intellectual  eminence?  Is  it 
not  distinguished  by  intellectual  inferiority  ?  I  speak 
of  course  of  the  exercise  of  intellect,  and  I  believe  that 
if  we  look  around  us,  we  shall  find  that  no  class  of  men, 
in  a  parallel  rank  in  society,  exercise  it  less,  or  less 
honourably  to  human  nature,  than  the  military  pro- 
fession.*    I  do  not,  however,  attribute  the  want  of  intel- 

*  This  inferiority  will  probably  be  found  less  conspicuous  in  the  private 
ihan  i>  his  superiors.     Employment  in  different  situations,  or  in  foreign  coun- 
M2 


140 

lectual  excellence  solely  to  the  implicit  submissions  of 
a  military  life.  Nor  do  I  say  that  this  want  is  so  much 
the  fault  of  the  soldier,  as  of  the  circumstances  to  which 
he  is  subjected.  We  attribute  this  evil,  also,  to  its 
rightful  parent.  The  resignation  of  our  actions  to  the 
direction  of  a  foreign  will,  is  made  so  familiar  to  us  by 
war,  and  is  mingled  with  so  many  associations  which 
reconcile  it,  that  I  am  afraid  lest  the  reader  should  not 
contemplate  it  with  sufficient  abstraction. — Let  him 
remember  that  in  7iot]iing  but  in  war  do  we  submit  to  it. 
It  becomes  a  subject  yet  more  serious,  if  military 
obedience  requires  the  relinquishment  of  our  moral 
agency, — if  it  requires  us  to  do,  not  only  what  may  be 
opposed  to  our  will,  but  what  is  opposed  to  our  con- 
sciences. And  it  does  require  this;  a  soldier  must 
obey,  how  criminal  soever  the  command,  and  how- 
criminal  soever  he  knows  it  to  be.  It  is  certain  that 
of  those  who  compose  armies  many  commit  actions 
which  they  believe  to  be  wicked,  and  which  they  would 
not  commit  but  for  the  obligations  of  a  military  life. 
Although  a  soldier  determinately  believes  that  the  war 
is  unjust,  although  he  is  convinced  that  his  particular 
part  of  the  service  is  atrociously  criminal,  still  he  must 
proceed — he  must  prosecute  the  purposes  of  injustice  or 
robbery ;  he  must  participate  in  the  guilt,  and  be  him- 
self a  robber.  When  we  have  sacrificed  thus  much  of 
principle,  what  do  we  retain  ?  If  we  abandon  all  use 
of  our  perceptions  of  good  and  evil,  to  what  purpose 
has  the  capacity  of  perception  been  given?  It  were  as 
well  to  possess  no  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  as  to  pre- 

tries,  and  the  consequent  acquisition  of  information,  often  make  the  private 
soldier  superior  in  intelligence  to  labourers  and  mechanics  ;  a  cause  of  supe- 
riority which,  of  course,  does  not  similarly  operate  amongst  men  of  education 
We  would  here  beg  the  reader  to  bear  in  his  recollection,  the  limitations 
which  are  stated  in  the  preface,  respecting  the  application  of  any  apparen 
severity  in  our  remarks. 


141 

vent  ourselves  from  the  pursuit  or  rejection  of  them. 
To  abandon  some  of  the  most  exalted  privileges  which 
Heaven  has  granted  to  mankind,  to  refuse  the  accept- 
ance of  them,  and  to  throw  them  back,  as  it  were,  upon 
the  Donor,  is  surely  little  other  than  profane.  He  who 
hid  a  talent  was  of  old  punished  for  his  wickedness: 
what  then  is  the  offence  of  him  who  refuses  to  receive 
it?  Such  a  resignation  of  our  moral  agency  is  not 
contended  for  or  tolerated  in  any  one  other  circumstance 
of  human  life.  War  stands  upon  this  pinnacle  of 
depravity  alone.  She,  only,  in  the  supremacy  of  crime, 
has  told  us  that  she  has  abolished  even  the  obligation  to 
be  virtuous. 

To  what  a  situation  is  a  rational  and  responsible 
being  reduced,  who  commits  actions,  good  or  bad, 
mischievous  or  beneficial,  at  the  word  of  another?  I 
can  conceive  no  o^reater  degradation.  It  is  the  lowest, 
the  final  abjectness  of  the  moral  nature.  It  is  this 
if  we  abate  the  glitter  of  war,  and  if  we  add  this  glitter 
it  is  nothing  more.  Surely  the  dignity  of  reason,  and 
the  Hght  of  revelation,  and  our  responsibility  to  God, 
should  make  us  pause  before  we  become  the  voluntary 
subjects  of  this  monstrous  system. 

I  do  not  know,  indeed,  under  what  circumstances 
of  responsibility  di  man  supposes  himself  to  be  placed, 
who  thus  abandons  and  violates  his  own  sense  of  rec- 
titude and  of  his  duties.  Either  he  is  responsible  for 
his  actions  or  he  is  not;  and  the  question  is  a  serious 
one  to  determine.  Christianity  has  certainly  never 
stated  any  cases  in  which  personal  responsibility  ceases. 
If  she  admits  such  cases,  she  has  at  least  not  told  us  so; 
but  she  has  told  us,  explicitly  and  repeatedly,  that  she 
does  require  individual  obedience  and  impose  individual 
responsibility.  She  has  made  no  exceptions  to  the 
imperativeness    of  her    obligations,   whether   we   are 


142 

required  to  neglect  them  or  not;  and  I  can  discover 
in  her  sanctions,  no  reason  to  suppose  that  in  her 
final  adjudications  she  admits  the  plea  that  another 
required  us  to  do  that  which  she  required  us  to  for- 
bear.— But  it  may  be  feared,  it  may  be  believed,  that 
how  httle  soever  reUgion  will  abate  of  the  responsibility 
of  those  who  obey,  she  will  impose  not  a  little  upon 
those  who  command.  They,  at  least,  are  answerable 
for  the  enormities  of  war;  unless,  indeed,  any  one  shall 
tell  me  that  responsibility  attaches  nowhere;  that  that 
which  would  be  wickedness  in  another  man,  is  innocence 
in  a  soldier;  and  that  Heaven  has  granted  to  the  di- 
rectors of  war  a  privileged  immunity,  by  virtue  of 
w^hich  crime  incurs  no  guilt  and  receives  no  punish- 
ment. 

It  appears  to  me  that  the  obedience  which  war  exacts 
to  arbitrary  power  possesses  more  of  the  character  of 
servility  and  even  of  slavery,  than  we  are  accustomed 
to  suppose;  and  as  I  think  this  consideration  may 
reasonably  affect  our  feeling  of  independence,  how  little 
soever  higher  considerations  may  affect  our  consciences, 
I  w^ould  allow  myself  in  a  few  sentences  upon  the  sub- 
ject. I  will  acknowledge  that  when  I  see  a  company 
of  men  in  a  stated  dress,  and  of  a  stated  colour,  ranged, 
rank  and  file,  in  the  attitude  of  obedience,  turning  or 
walking  at  the  w^ord  of  another,  now  changing  the  po- 
sition of  a  limb  and  now  altering  the  angle  of  a  foot,  1 
feel  humiliation  and  shame.  I  feel  humiliation  and 
shame  when  I  think  of  the  capacities  and  the  prospects 
of  man,  at  seeing  him  thus  drilled  into  obsequiousness 
and  educated  into  machinery.  I  do  not  know  whether 
I  shall  be  charged  with  indulging  in  idle  sentiment 
or  idler  affectation.  If  I  hold  unusual  language  upon 
the  subject,  let  it  be  remembered  that  the  subject  is 
itself  unusual.     I  will  retract  my  affectation  and  senti 


143 

ment,  if  the  reader  will  show  me  any  case  in  life  paral 
lei  to  that  to  which  I  have  applied  it. 

No  one  questions  whether  military  power  be  arbi 
trary.  That  which  governs  an  army,  says  Paley,  is 
DESPOTISM  :  and  the  subjects  of  despotic  power  we  call 
slaves.  Yet  a  man  may  live  under  an  arbitrary  prince 
with  only  the  liability  to  slavery ;  he  may  live  and  die, 
unmolested  in  his  person  and  unrestrained  in  his  free- 
dom. But  the  despotism  of  an  army  is  an  operative 
despotism,  and  a  soldier  is  practically  and  personally  a 
slave.  Submission  to  arbitrary  authority  is  the  business 
of  his  life  :   the  will  of  the  despot  is  his  rule  of  action. 

It  is  vain  to  urge  that  if  this  be  slavery,  every  one 
who  labours  for  another  is  a  slave;  because  there  is 
a  difference  between  the  subjection  of  a  soldier  and  that 
of  all  other  labourers,  in  which  the  essence  of  slavery 
consists.  If  I  order  my  servant  to  do  a  given  action,  he 
is  at  liberty,  if  he  think  the  action  improper,  or  if,  from 
any  other  cause,  he  choose  not  to  do  it,  to  refuse  his  obe- 
dience. I  can  discharge  him  from  my  service  indeed, 
but  I  cannot  compel  obedience  or  yunish  his  refusal. 
The  soldier  is  thus  punishp/i  or  compelled.  It  matters 
not  whether  he  have  entered  the  service  voluntarily  or 
involuntarily:  being  there,  he  is  required  to  do  what 
may  be,  and  what  in  fact  often  is,  opposed  to  his  will 
and  his  judgment.  If  he  refuse  obedience,  he  is  dread- 
fully punished;  his  flesh  is  lacerated  and  torn  from  his 
body,  and  finally,  if  he  persists  in  his  refusal,  he  may  be 
shot.  Neither  is  he  permitted  to  leave  the  service. 
His  natural  right  to  go  whither  he  would,  of  which 
nothing  but  his  own  crimes  otherwise  deprives  hini; 
is  denied  to  him  by  war.  If  he  attempt  to  exercise  this 
right,  he  is  pursued  as  a  felon,  he  is  brought  back 
in  irons,  and  is  miserably  tortured  for  '' desertion. '^ 
This,  therefore,  we  think  is  slavery. 


144 

I  have  heard  it  contended  that  an  apprentice  is  a 
slave  equally  with  a  soldier;  but  it  appears  to  be  for- 
gfotten  that  an  apprentice  is  consigned  to  the  govern- 
•nent  of  another  because  he  is  not  able  to  govern  him- 
self. But  even  were  apprenticeship  to  continue  through 
life,  it  would  serve  the  objection  but  little.  Neither 
custom  nor  law  allows  a  master  to  require  his  ap- 
prentice to  do  an  immoral  action.  There  is  nothing 
in  his  authority  analogous  to  that  which  compels  a  sol- 
dier to  do  what  he  is  persuaded  is  wicked  or  unjust. 
Neither,  again,  can  a  master  compel  the  obedience  of 
an  apprentice  by  the  punishments  of  a  soldier.  Even 
if  his  commands  be  reasonable,  he  cannot,  for  refracto- 
riness, torture  him  into  a  swoon,  and  then  revive  him 
with  stimulants  only  to  torture  him  again;  still  less 
can  he  take  him  to  a  field,  and  shoot  him.  And  if 
the  command  be  vicious,  he  may  not  punish  his  dis- 
obedience at  all. — Bring  the  despotism  that  governs  an 
army  into  the  government  of  the  state,  and  what 
would  Englishmen  say?  They  would  say,  with  one 
voice,  that  Englishmen  were  slaves. 

If  this  view  of  military  subjection  fail  to  affect  our 
pride,  we  are  to  attribute  the  failure  to  that  power  of 
public  opinion  by  which  all  things  seem  reconcilable 
to  us;  by  which  situations,  that  would  otherwise  be 
loathsome  and  revolting,  are  made  not  only  tolerable 
but  pleasurable.  Take  away  the  influence  and  the 
gloss  of  public  opinion  from  the  situation  of  a  soldier, 
and  what  should  we  call  it?  We  should  call  it  a  state 
of  insufferable  degradation ;  of  pitiable  slavery.  But 
public  opinion,  although  it  may  influence  notions,  can- 
not alter  things.  Whatever  may  be  our  notion  of  the 
soldier's  situation,  he  has  indisputably  resigned  both 
his  moral  and  his  natural  liberty  to  the  government  of 
despotic   power.     He  has  added  to  ordinary  slavery. 


145 

the  slaver}'  of  the  conscience ;  and  he  is  therefore,  in 
a  twofold  sense,  a  slave. 

If  I  be  asked  why  I  thus  complain  of  the  nature 
of  military  obedience,  I  answer,  with  Dr.  Watson,  that 
all  "despotism  is  an  offence  against  natural  justice;  it 
is  a  degradation  of  the  dignity  of  man,  and  ought  not, 
on  any  occasion,  to  be  either  practised  or  submitted 
to:" — I  answer  that  the  obedience  of  a  soldier  does, 
in  point  of  fact,  depress  the  erectness  and  independence 
of  his  mind; — I  answer,  again,  that  it  is  a  sacrifice 
of  his  moral  agency,  which  impairs  and  vitiates  his 
principles,  and  which  our  religion  emphatically  con- 
demns; and,  finally  and  principally  I  answer,  that  such 
obedience  is  not  defended  or  permitted  for  any  other 
purpose  than  the  prosecution  of  war,  and  that  it  is 
therefore  a  powerful  evidence  against  the  solitary 
system  that  requires  it.  I  do  not  question  the  neces- 
sity of  despotism  to  war:  it  is  because  I  know  that 
it  is  necessary  that  I  thus  refer  to  it ;  for  I  say  that 
whatever  makes  such  despotism  and  consequent  degra- 
dation and  vice  necessary,  must  itself  be  bad,  and 
must  be  utterly  incompatible  with  the  principles  of 
Christianity.* 

Yet  I  do  not  know  whether,  in  its  effects  on  the  mi- 
litary character,  the  greatest  moral  evil  of  war  is  to  be 
sought.  Upon  the  community  its  effects  are  indeed 
less  apparent,  because  they  who  are  the  secondary 
subjects  of  the  immoral  influence  are  less  intensely 
affected  by  it  than  the  immediate  agents  of  its  diffusion. 

*  I  would  scarcely  refer  to  the  monstrous  practice  of  impressing  seamen, 
because  there  are  many  who  deplore  and  many  who  condemn  it.  W'hether 
this  also  be  necessary  to  war,  I  know  not : — probably  it  is  necessary ;  and  if 
it  be,  I  would  ask  no  other  evidence  against  the  system  that  requires  it. 
8uch  an  invasion  of  the  natural  rights  of  man,  such  a  monstrous  assumption 
of  arbitrary  power,  such  a  violation  of  every  principle  of  justice^  cannot 
possibly  be  nf^cessary  to  any  fy?tem  of  which  Christianity  approves, 

T 


14G 

But  whatever  is  deficient  in  the  degree  cf  evil,  is  pro- 
bably more  than  compensated  by  its  extent.  The 
influence  is  like  that  of  a  continual  and  noxious  va- 
pour; we  neither  regard  nor  perceive  it,  but  it  secretly 
undermines  the  moral  health. 

Every  one  knows  that  vice  is  contagious.  The 
depravity  of  one  man  has  always  a  tendency  to  deprave 
his  neighbours;  and  it  therefore  requires  no  unusual 
acuteness  to  discover,  that  the  prodigious  mass  of  im- 
morality and  crime,  which  are  accumulated  by  a  w^ar, 
must  have  a  powerful  effect  in  "demoralizing"  the 
public.  But  there  is  one  circumstance  connected  with 
the  injurious  influence  of  war,  which  makes  it  pecu- 
liarly operative  and  malignant.  It  is,  that  w^e  do  not 
hate  or  fear  the  influence,  and  do  not  fortify  ourselves 
ao^ainst  it.  Other  vicious  influences  insinuate  them- 
selves  into  our  minds  by  stealth ;  but  this  v/e  receive 
with  open  embrace.  If  a  felon  exhibits  an  example 
of  depravity  and  outrage,  we  are  little  likely  to  be  cor- 
rupted by  it ;  because  we  do  not  love  his  conduct  or 
approve  it.  But  from  whatever  cause  it  happens, 
the  whole  system  of  war  is  the  subject  of  our  compla- 
cency or  pleasure;  and  it  is  therefore  that  its  mischief 
is  so  immense.  If  the  soldier  who  is  familiarized  wdth 
slaughter  and  rejoices  in  it,  loses  some  of  his  Christian 
dispositions,  the  citizen  who,  without  committing  the 
slaughter,  unites  in  the  exultation,  loses  also  some  of 
his.  If  he  who  ravages  a  city  and  plunders  its  inhabit- 
ants, impairs  his  principles  of  probity,  he  who  ap- 
proves and  applauds  the  outrage,  loses  also  something 
of  his  integrity  or  benevolence.  We  acknowledge 
these  truths  when  applied  to  other  cases.  It  is  agreed 
that  a  frequency  of  capital  punishments  has  a  tendency 
to  make  the  people  callous,  to  harden  them  against 
human  suffering,  and  to  deprave  their  moral  principles. 


147 

And  the  same  effect  will  necessarily  be  produced 
by  war,  of  which  the  destruction  of  life  is  incom- 
parably greater,  and  of  which  our  abhorrence  is  incom- 
parably less. — The  simple  truth  is,  that  we  are  gratified 
and  delighted  with  things  which  are  incompatible  with 
Christianity,  and  that  our  minds  therefore  become  alien- 
ated from  its  love.  Our  affections  cannot  be  fully 
directed  to  "two  masters."  If  we  love  and  delight  in 
war,  we  are  little  likely  to  love  and  delight  in  the 
dispositions  of  Christianity. — And  the  evil  is  in  its  own 
nature  of  almost  universal  operation.  During  a  war,  a 
whole  people  become  familiarized  with  the  utmost 
excesses  of  enormity — with  the  utmost  intensity  of 
human  wickedness — and  they  rejoice  and  exult  in 
them;  so  that  there  is  probably  not  an  individual  in 
a  hundred  who  does  not  lose  something  of  his  Chris- 
tian principles  by  a  ten  years'  war. 

The  effect  of  the  system  in  preventing  the  percep- 
tion, the  love,  and  the  operation  of  Christian  princi- 
ples, in  the  minds  of  men  who  know  the  nature  and 
obligations  of  them,  needs  little  illustration.  We  often 
see  that  Christianity  cannot  accord  with  the  system, 
but  the  conviction  does  not  often  operate  on  our  minds. 
In  one  of  the  speeches  of  Bishop  Watson  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  there  occur  these  words: — "Would  to  God, 
my  lords,  that  the  spirit  of  the  Christian  religion 
would  exert  its  influence  over  the  hearts  of  individuals 
in  their  public  capacity ;  then  would  revenge,  avarice, 
and  ambition,  which  have  fattened  the  earth  with  the 
blood  of  her  children,  be  banished  from  the  counsels 
.of  princes,  and  there  would  be  no  more  war.  The  time 
will  come — the  prophet  hath  said  it,  and  I  believe  it — 
the  time  will  assuredly  come  when  nation,  literally 
speaking,  shall  no  longer  lift  up  hand   against  nation. 

No  man  will  rejoice,  my  lords,  more  than  I  shaj..   .4  r^c» 

N 


143 

the  time  when  peace  shall  depend  on  an  obedience  to 
the  benevolent  principles  of  the  gospel."*  This  is 
language  becoming  a  Christian.  Would  it  have  been 
believed  that  this  same  man  voluntarily  and  studiously 
added  almost  one  half  to  the  power  of  gunpowder, 
in  order  that  the  ball  which  before  would  kill  but  six 
men,  might  now  kill  ten ;  and  that  he  did  this,  knowing 
that  this  purpose  was  to  spread  wider  destruction 
and  bloodier  slaughter?  Above  all,  would  it  be  believ- 
ed that  he  recorded  this  achievement  as  an  evidence  of 
his  sagacity,  and  that  he  recorded  it  in  the  book  which 
contains  the  declaration  I  have  quoted? 

The  same  consequences  attach  to  the  influence  of  the 
soldier's  personal  character.  Whatever  that  character 
be,  if  it  arise  out  of  his  profession,  we  seldom  regard  it 
with  repulsion.  We  look  upon  him  as  a  man  whose 
honour  and  spirit  compensate  for  "venial  errors."  If 
he  be  spirited  and  gallant,  we  ask  not  for  his  virtue  and 
care  not  for  his  profligacy.  We  look  upon  the  sailor 
as  a  brave  and  noble  fellow^  who  may  reasonably  be 
allowed  in  droll  profaneness,  and  sailorlike  debauche- 
ries— debaucheries,  which,  in  the  paid-ofl"  crew  of  a 
man-of-war,  seem  sometimes  to  be  animated  by 

the  dissoluted  Spirit  that  fell, 

The  fleshliest  Incubus. 

We  are,  however,  much  diverted  by  them.  The  sai- 
lor's cool  and  clumsy  vices  are  very  amusing  to  us; 
and  so  that  he  amuses  us,  we  are  indifferent  to  his 
crimes.  That  some  men  should  be  wicked,  is  bad — 
that  the  many  should  feel  complacency  in  wickedness 
is,  perhaps,  worse.  We  may  flatter  ourselves  v^^ith 
dreams  of  our  own  virtue,  but  that  virtue  is  very  ques- 

*  Life  of  Bishop  Watson. 


149 

tionable — those  principles  are  very  unoperative,  which 
permit  us  to  receive  pleasure  from  the  contemplation 
of  human  depravity,  with  whatever  "honour  or  spirit" 
that  depravity  is  connected.  Such  principles  and 
virtue  will  oppose,  at  any  rate,  little  resistance  to  temp- 
tation. An  abhorrence  of  wickedness  is  more  than  an 
outwork  of  the  moral  citadel.  He  that  does  not  hate 
vice  has  opened  a  passage  for  its  entrance.* 

1  do  not  think  that  those  who  feel  an  interest  m  the 
virtue  and  the  happiness  of  the  world  will  regard  the 
animosity  of  party  and  the  restlessness  of  resentment 
which  are  produced  by  a  war,  as  trifling  evils.  If  any 
thing  be  opposite  to  Christianity,  it  is  retaliation  and 
revenge.  In  the  obligation  to  restrain  these  disposi- 
tions, much  of  the  characteristic  placability  of  Chris- 
tianity consists.  The  very  essence  and  spirit  of  our 
religion  are  abhorrent  from  resentment. — The  very 
essence  and  spirit  of  war  are  promotive  of  resentment ; 
and  what  then  must  be  their  mutual  adverseness? 
That  war  excites  these  passions,  needs  not  be  proved. 
When  a  war  is  in  contemplation,  or  when  it  has  been 
begun,  what  are  the  endeavours  of  its  promoters  ?  They 
animate  us  by  every  artifice  of  excitement  to  hatred 
and  animosity.  Pamphlets,  placards,  newspapers,  cari- 
catures— every  agent  is  in  requisition  to  irritate  us 
into  malignity.  Nay,  dreadful  as  it  is,  the  pulpit 
resounds  with  declamations  to  stimulate  our  too  sluggish 
resentment,  and  to  invite  us  to  blood. — And  thus  the 
most  unchristianlike  of  all  our  passions,  the  passion 

*  All  sober  men  allow  this  to  be  true  in  relation  to  the  influence  of  those 
Novels  which  decorate  a  profligate  character  with  objects  of  attraction.  They 
allow  that  our  complacency  with  these  subjects  abates  our  hatred  of  the 
accompanying  vices.  And  the  same  also  is  true  in  relation  to  war ;  with  the 
difference,  indeed,  which  is  likely  to  exist  between  the  influence  of  the  vices 
of  fiction  and  that  of  the  vices  of  real  life. 


150 

which  it  is  most  the  object  of  our  religion  to  repress,  is 
excited  and  fostered.  Christianity  cannot  be  flourishing 
under  circumstances  like  these.  The  more  effectually 
we  are  animated  to  war,  the  more  nearly  we  extino-uisli 
the  dispositions  of  our  religion.  War  and  Christian- 
ity are  like  the  opposite  ends  of  a  balance,  of  which 
one  is  depressed  by  the  elevation  of  the  other. 

These  are  the  consequences  which  make  war  dread- 
ful to  a  state.  Slaughter  and  devastation  are  suffi- 
ciently terrible,  but  their  collateral  evils  are  their 
greatest.  It  is  the  immoral  feeling  that  war  diffuses — 
it  is  the  depravation  of  principle,  which  forms  the  mass 
of  its  mischief 

There  is  one  mode  of  hostility  that  is  allowed  and 
encouraged  by  war,  which  appears  to  be  distinguished 
by  peculiar  atrocity :  I  mean  privateering.  If  war 
could  be  shown  to  be  necessary  or  right,  I  think  this, 
at  least,  were  indefensible.  It  were  surely  enough 
that  army  slaughtered  army,  and  that  fleet  destroyed 
fleet,  without  arming  individual  avarice  for  private 
plunder,  and  legalizing  robbery  because  it  is  not  of  our 
countrymen.  Who  are  the  victims  of  this  plunder, 
and  what  are  its  effects?  Does  it  produce  any  mis- 
chief to  our  enemies  but  the  ruin  of  those  who  perhaps 
would  gladly  have  been  friends? — of  those  who  are 
made  enemies  only  by  the  will  of  their  rulers,  and  who 
now  conduct  their  commerce  with  no  other  solicitude 
about  the  war  than  how  they  may  escape  the  rapine 
which  it  sanctions?  Privateering  can  scarcely  plead 
even  the  merit  of  public  mischief  in  its  favour.  An 
empire  is  little  injured  by  the  wretchedness  and  star- 
vation of  a  few  of  its  citizens.  The  robbery  may,  in- 
deed, be  carried  to  such  extent,  and  such  multitudes 
may  be  plundered,  that  the  ruin  of  individuals  may 
impart  poverty  to  a  state.     But  for  this  mischief  the 


151 

privateer  can  seldom  hope :  and  what  is  that  practice, 
of  which  the  only  topic  of  defence  is  the  enormity  of 
its  mischief! 

There  is  a  yet  more  dreadful  consideration : — The 
privateer  is  not  only  a  robber,  but  a  murderer.  If  he 
cannot  otherwise  plunder  his  victim,  human  life  is  no 
obstacle  to  his  rapine.  Robbery  is  his  object,  and  his 
object  he  will  attain.  Nor  has  he  the  ordinary  excuses 
of  slaughter  in  his  defence.  His  government  does  not 
require  it  of  him :  he  makes  no  pretext  of  patriotism, 
but  robs  and  murders  of  his  own  choice,  and  simply 
for  gain.  The  soldier  makes  a  bad  apology  when 
he  pleads  the  command  of  his  superior,  but  the  pri- 
vateer has  no  command  to  plead ;  and  with  no  object 
but  plunder,  he  deliberately  seeks  a  set  of  ruffians  who 
are  unprincipled  enough  for  robbery  and  ferocious 
enough  for  murder,  and  sallies  with  them  upon  the 
ocean,  like  tigers  upon  a  desert,  and  like  tigers  prowl- 
ing for  prey, — To  talk  of  Christianity,  as  permitting 
these  monstrous  proceedings,  implies  deplorable  fatuity 
or  more  deplorable  profaneness.  I  would,  however, 
hope  that  he  who  sends  out  a  privateer  has  not  so  little 
shame  as  to  pretend  to  conscience  or  honesty. — If  he 
will  be  a  robber  and  a  murderer,  let  him  at  least  not  be 
a  hypocrite;  for  it  is  hypocrisy  for  such  men  to  pre- 
tend to  religion  or  morality.  He  that  thus  robs  the 
subjects  of  another  country,  wants  nothing  but  im- 
punity to  make  him  rob  his  neighbour:  he  has  no 
restraint  from  principle. 

I  know  not  how  it  happens  that  men  make  preten- 
sions to  Christianity  whilst  they  sanction  or  promote 
such  prodigious  wickedness.  It  is  sufficiently  certain, 
that  whatever  be  their  pretensions  to  it,  it  is  not  ope- 
rative upon  their  conduct.  Such  men  may  talk  of 
religion,  but  they  neither  possess  nor  regard  it :  and 

/Y2 


152 

although  I  would  not  embrace  in  such  censure  those 
who,  without  immediate  or  remote  participation  in  the 
crime,  look  upon  it  with  secret  approbation  because 
it  injures  their  "  enemies,"  I  would  nevertheless  sug- 
gest to  their  consideration  whether  their  moral  prin- 
ciples are  at  that  point  in  the  scale  of  purity  and 
benevolence  which  religion  enjoins. 

We  often  hear,  during  a  war,  of  subsidies  from  one 
nation  to  another  for  the  loan  of  an  army ;  and  we  hear 
of  this  without  any  emotion,  except  perhaps  of  joy  at 
the  greater  probability  of  triumph,  or  of  anger  that 
our  money  is  expended.  Yet,  surely,  if  we  contem- 
plate such  a  bargain  for  a  moment,  we  shall  perceive 
that  our  first  and  greatest  emotion  ought  to  be  abhor- 
rence.— To  borrow  ten  thousand  men  w^ho  know 
nothing  of  our  quarrel,  and  care  nothing  for  it,  to  help 
us  to  slaughter  their  fellows!  To  pay  for  their  help  in 
guineas  to  their  sovereign !  Well  has  it  been  exclaimed. 

War  is  a  game,  that  were  their  subjects  wise, 
Kings  would  not  play  at. 

A  king  sells  his  subjects  as  a  farmer  sells  his  cattle; 
and  sends  them  to  destroy  a  people,  whom,  if  they  had 
been  higher  bidders,  he  w^ould  perhaps  have  sent  them 
to  defend.  That  kings  should  do  this  may  grieve,  but 
it  cannot  surprise  us :  avarice  has  been  as  unprincipled 
in  humbler  life;  the  possible  malignity  of  individual 
wickedness  is  perhaps  without  any  limit.  But  that 
a  large  number  of  persons,  with  the  feelings  and  reason 
of  men,  should  coolly  listen  to  the  bargain  of  their 
sale,  should  compute  the  guineas  that  will  pay  for  their 
blood,  and  should  then  quietly  be  led  to  a  place  where 
they  are  to  kill  people  towards  whom  they  have  no 
animosity,  is  simply  w^onderful.  To  what  has  invete- 
racy of  habit  reconciled  mankind  '     I  have  no  capacity 


153 

of  supposing  a  case  of  slavery,  if  slavery  be  denied  in 
this.  Men  have  been  sold  in  another  continent,  and 
England  has  been  shocked  and  aronsed  to  interference; 
yet  these  men  were  sold,  not  to  be  slaughtered,  but 
to  work :  but  of  the  purchases  and  sales  of  the  world's 
political  butchers,  England  cares  nothing  and  thinks 
nothing;  nay,  she  is  a  participator  in  the  bargains. 
There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  upon  other  subjects  of 
horror,  similar  familiarity  of  habit  would  produce  simi- 
lar effects;  or  that  he  who  heedlessly  contemplates  the 
purchase  of  an  army,  wants  nothing  but  this  familiarity 
to  make  him  heedlessly  look  on  at  the  commission 
of  parricide.  If  we  could  for  one  moment  emanciptae 
ourselves  from  this  power  of  habit,  how  would  it  change 
the  scene  that  is  before  us !  Little  would  remain  to 
war  of  splendour  or  glory,  but  we  should  be  left  with 
one  wide  waste  of  iniquity  and  wretchedness. 

It  is  the  custom,  during  the  continuance  of  a  war,  to 
offer  public  prayers  for  the  success  of  our  arms ;  and 
our  enemies  pray  also  for  the  success  of  theirs.  I  will 
acknowledge  that  this  practice  appears  to  me  to  be 
eminently  shocking  and  profane.  The  idea  of  two 
communities  of  Christians,  separated  perhaps  by  a 
creek,  at  the  same  moment  begging  their  common 
Father  to  assist  them  in  reciprocal  destruction,  is  an 
idea  of  horror  to  which  I  know  no  parallel.  Lord^ 
assist  us  to  slaughter  our  enemies :  This  is  our  petition. 
— "Father,  forgive  them;  they  know  not  what  they 
do."     This  is  the  petition  of  Christ. 

It  is  certain  that  of  two  contending  communities, 
both  cannot  be  in  the  right.  Yet  both  appeal  to  Heaven 
to  avouch  the  justice  of  their  cause,  and  both  mingle 
with  their  petitions  for  the  increase,  perhaps,  of  Chris- 
tian dispositions,  importunities  to  the  God  of  mercy  to 
assist  them  in  the  destruction  of  one  another.     Taking 

U 


154 

into  account  the  ferocity  of  the  request — the  solemnity 
of  its  circumstances — the  falsehood  of  its  representations 
— the  fact  that  both  parties  are  Christians,  and  that 
their  importunities  are  simultaneous  to  their  common 
Lord,  I  do  not  think  that  the  world  exhibits  another 
example  of  such  irreverent  and  shocking  iniquity- 
Surely  it  were  enough  that  we  slaughter  one  another 
alone  in  our  pigmy  quarrels,  without  sohciting  the  Fa- 
ther of  the  universe  to  be  concerned  in  them:  surely  it 
were  enough  that  each  reviles  the  other  with  the  iniquity 
of  his  cause,  without  each  assuring  Heaven  that  he  only 
is  in  the  right — an  assurance  that  is  false,  probably  in 
both,  and  certainly  in  one. 

To  attempt  to  pursue  the  consequences  of  war 
through  all  her  ramifications  of  evil  were,  however, 
both  endless  and  vain.  It  is  a  moral  gangrene  which 
diffuses  its  humours  through  the  whole  political  and 
social  system.  To  expose  its  mischief  is  to  exhibit  all 
evil;  for  there  is  no  evil  which  it  does  not  occasion,  and 
it  has  much  that  is  peculiar  to  itself 

That,  together  with  its  muliplied  evils,  war  produces 
some  good,  I  have  no  wish  to  deny.  I  know  that  it 
sometimes  elicits  valuable  qualities  which  had  other- 
wise been  concealed,  and  that  it  often  produces  collateral 
and  adventitious,  and  sometimes  immediate  advantages. 
If  all  this  could  be  denied,  it  would  be  needless  to  deny 
it,  for  it  is  of  no  consequence  to  the  question  whether 
it  be  proved.  That  any  wide  extended  system  should 
not  produce  some  benefits,  can  never  happen.  In  such 
a  system,  it  were  an  unheard-of  purity  of  evil,  which 
was  evil  without  any  mixture  of  good.  But,  to  com- 
pare the  ascertained  advantages  of  war  with  its  as- 
certained mischiefs,  or  with  the  ascertained  advantages 
of  a  system  of  peace,  and  to  maintain  a  question  as  to 
the  preponderance  of  good,  implies  not  ignorance,  but 


155 

guilt — not  incapacity  of  determination,  but  voluntary 
falsehood. 

But  I  rejoice  in  the  conviction  that  the  hour  is  ap- 
proaching, when  Christians  shall  cease  to  be  the  mur- 
derers of  one  another.  Christian  light  is  certainly 
spreading,  and  there  is  scarcely  a  country  in  Europe, 
in  which  the  arguments  for  unconditional  peace  have 
not  recently  produced  conviction.  This  conviction  is 
extending  in  oar  own  country,  in  such  a  degree,  and 
upon  such  minds,  that  it  makes  the  charge  of  enthusi- 
asm or  folly,  vain  and  idle.  The  friends  of  peace,  if 
we  choose  to  despise  their  opinions,  cannot  themselves 
be  despised ;  and  every  year  is  adding  to  their  number, 
and  to  the  sum  of  their  learnino^  and  their  intellect. 


It  will  perhaps  be  asked,  what  then  are  the  duties 
of  a  subject  who  believes  that  all  war  is  incompatible 
with  his  religion,  but  whose  governors  engage  in  a  war 
and  demand  his  service?  We  answer  explicitly,  It 
is  his  duty,  mildly  and  teinperately,  yet  firmly,  to  refuse 
to  serve. — There  are  some  persons,  who,  without  any 
determinate  process  of  reasoning,  appear  to  conclude 
that  responsibility  for  national  measures  attaches  solely 
to  those  who  direct  them;  that  it  is  the  business  of 
governments  to  consider  what  is  good  for  the  commu- 
nity, and  that,  in  these  cases,  the  duty  of  the  subject  is 
mero^ed  in  the  will  of  the  sovereign.  Considerations 
like  these  are,  I  believe,  often  voluntarily  permitted  to 
become  opiates  of  the  conscience.  I  have  no  part,  it  is 
said,  in  the  counsels  of  the  government,  and  am  not 
therefore  responsible  for  its  crimes.  We  are,  indeed, 
not  responsible  for  the  crimes  of  our  rulers,  but  we  are 
responsible  for  our  own;  and  the  crimes  of  oar  rulers 
are  our  own;  if,  whilst  we  believe  them  to  be  crimes, 


156 

we  promote  them  by  our  co-operation.  "It  is  at  all 
times/'  says  Gisborne,  ''the  duty  of  an  Englishman, 
steadfastly  to  decline  obeying  any  orders  of  his  supe- 
riors, which  his  conscience  should  tell  him  were  in  any 
degree  impious  or  unjust."*  The  apostles,  who  in- 
structed their  converts  to  be  subject  to  every  ordinance 
of  man  for  conscience'  sake,  and  to  submit  themselves 
to  those  who  were  in  authority,  and  who  taught  them, 
that  whoever  resisted  the  power,  resisted  the  ordinance 
of  God,  made  one  necessary  and  uniform  provision — 
that  the  magistrate  did  not  command  them  to  do,  what 
God  had  commanded  them  to  forbear.  With  the  regu- 
lations w^hich  the  government  of  a  country  thought 
fit  to  establish,  the  apostles  complied,  whatever  they 
might  think  of  their  wisdom  or  expediency,  provided, 
and  only  provided,  they  did  not,  by  this  compliance, 
abandon  their  allegiance  to  the  Governor  of  the  world. 
It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  observe  in  how  many  cases 
they  refused  to  obey  the  commands  of  the  governments 
under  which  they  were  placed,  or  how  openly  they 
maintained  the  duty  of  refusal,  whenever  these  com- 
mands interfered  with  their  higher  obligations.  It  is 
narrated  very  early  in  "the  Acts,"  that  one  of  their 
number  was  imprisoned  for  preaching,  that  he  was 
commanded  to  preach  no  more,  and  was  then  released. 
Soon  afterwards  all  the  apostles  were  imprisoned. 
"Did  we  not  straitly  command  you,"  said  the  rulers, 
"  that  ye  should  not  teach  in  this  name?"  The  answer 
which  they  made  is  in  point: — "We  ought  to  obey 
God  raiher  then  men."t  And  this  system  they  con- 
tinued to  pursue.  If  Csesar  had  ordered  one  of  the 
apostles  to  be  enrolled  in  his  legions,  does  any  one 
believe  that  he  would  have  served  ? 

But  those  who  suppose  that  obedience  in  all  things 

*  Duties  of  Men  in  Society.  f  Acts  vi.  28. 


157 

is  required,  or  that  responsibility  in  political  affairs 
is  transferred  from  the  subject  to  the  sovereign,  reduce 
themselves  to  a  great  dilemma.     It  is  to  say  that  we 
must  resign  our  conduct  and  our  consciences  to  the 
will  of  others,  and  act  wickedly  or  well,  as  their  good 
or  evil   may  preponderate,  without  merit  for  virtue 
or  responsibility  for  crime.     If  the  government  direct 
you  to  fire  your  neighbour's  property,  or  to  throw  him 
over  a  precipice,  will  you  obey?     If  you   will  not, 
there  is  an  end  of  the  argument;  for  if  you  may  reject 
its  authority  in  one  instance,  where  is  the  limit  to 
rejection  ?     There  is  no  rational  limit  but  that  which  is 
assigned  by  Christianity,  and  that  is  both  rational  and 
practicable.     If  any  one  should  ask  the  meaning  of 
the  words  "whoso  resisteth  the  power  resisteth  the 
ordinance  of  God"— v/e  answer,  that  it  refers  to  active 
resistance;  passive  resistance,  or  non-compliance,  the 
apostles  themselves  practised.     On  this  point  we  should 
be  distinctly   understood.     We  are   not  so  inconsis- 
tent as  to  recommend  a  civil  war,  in  order  to  avoid 
a  foreign  one— Refusal  to  obey  is  the  Jinal  duty  of 
Christians. 

We  think,  then,  that  it  is  the  business  of  every  man, 
who  believes  that  war  is  inconsistent  with  our  religion, 
respectfully,  but  steadfastly,  to  refuse  to  engage  in  it. 
Let  such  as  these  remember  that  an  honourable  and 
an  awful  duty  is  laid  upon  them.  It  is  upon  their 
fidelity,  so  far  as  human  agency  is  concerned,  that  the 
cause  of  peace  is  suspended.  Let  them  then  be  will- 
ing to  avow  their  opinions  and  to  defend  them.  Nei- 
ther let  them  be  contented  with  words,  if  more  than 
words,  if  suffering  also,  is  required.  It  is  only  by  the 
unyielding  perseverance  of  good  that  corruption  can 
be  extirpated.  If  you  believe  that  Jesus  Christ  has 
prohibited  slaughter,  let  not  the  opinion  or  the  com- 


158 

mands  of  a  world  induce  you  to  join  in  it.  By  this 
'*  steady  and  determinate  pursuit  of  virtue/'  the  bene- 
diction which  attaches  to  those  who  hear  the  sayings 
of  God  and  do  them,  will  rest  upon  you,  and  the  time 
will  come  when  even  the  world  will  honour  you,  as 
contributors  to  the  work  of  human  reformation 


THE    END. 


DATE  DUE 

! 

1 

GA.YLCRD 

PRINTED  IN  U..S. A. 

